The Mexico Reader: History, Culture, Politics 9781478022978

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THE MEXICO R EA DER H istory , C ulture , P olitics S econd E dition, revised and updated Gilbert M. Joseph and Timothy J. Henderson, editors

Duke University Press­  Durham and London  2022

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Praise for the First Edition of The Mexico Reader “This volume is a most sincere attempt to depict Mexico in all its complexity, an object carried out superbly and in an altogether unprecedented fashion. Very seldom has a reader, an analytically challenged subgenre by definition, done as much justice to any Latin American country.”—­Héctor D. Fernández L’Hoeste, The Latin Americanist “The Mexico Reader presents a diverse, original, and rare collection of primary and secondary texts. . . . The Mexico Reader is poised to become a highly prized collection of texts that any instructor will want to use and any student of Mexico will enjoy reading.”—­Juliette Levy, New Mexico Historical Review “[The Mexico Reader] could be the foundation of an exciting course. . . . You will not find a more varied or fearless introductory volume to Mexican Studies. . . . The most impressive aspect of the volume is the variety of voices it reveals. . . . Remarkable.”—­Timothy E. Anna, ­H-­LatAm, H-­Net Reviews “[A] careful selection of articles and texts that cover a wide variety of subjects. . . . The collection can be understood as a survey of intellectual culture in Mexico from a historical perspective, allowing readers to understand how Mexican reality has been conformed, transformed, and adapted. Recommended.”—­M. R. Lara, Choice “Three layers of introductions—­for the volume, for each section and for each text—­provide necessary contextual information, while highlighting emerging themes. Thanks in part to these excellent introductions, students and teachers of Mexico will find that this volume could supplant textbook histories, while giving students access to hundreds of pages of primary sources, well-­ chosen images and two photo-­ essays.”—­Patience A. Schnell, Journal of Latin American Studies “For any journey through Mexican history, politics, social movements, and popular culture, travelers should start with this fascinating collection. Expertly edited and translated, each document adds to the rich landscape and each is cogently introduced to the reader. The perfect source book for any college course on Mexico from the Aztecs and Mayas to the twenty-­fi rst century.”—­John H. Coatsworth, Columbia University “Teachers will find a tremendous wealth of material in this new anthology, allowing them to choose selections supporting a wide range of historical approaches. . . . This volume will make a thought-­provoking read.”—­Jeffrey M. Pilcher, The Americas

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The Mexico Reader

S econd E dition

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© 2022 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-­f ree paper ∞ Typeset in Monotype Dante by BW&A Books Library of Congress Cataloging-­i n-­P ublication Data Names: Joseph, G. M. (Gilbert Michael), [date] editor. | Henderson, Timothy J., editor. Title: The Mexico reader : history, culture, politics / Gilbert M. Joseph and Timothy J. Henderson, editors. Other titles: Latin America readers. Description: Second edition, revised and updated. | Durham : Duke University Press, 2022. | Series: The Latin America readers | Includes index. | Includes translations from Spanish. Identifiers: lccn 2021042999 (print) lccn 2021043000 (ebook) isbn 9781478015734 (hardcover) isbn 9781478018360 (paperback) isbn 9781478022978 (ebook) Subjects: lcsh: Mexico—History. | Mexico—Social conditions. | Mexico—Economic conditions. | bisac: history / Latin America / Mexico | travel / Mexico Classification: lcc f1226 .m53 2022 (print) | lcc f1226 (ebook) | ddc 972—dc23/eng/20211112 lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021042999 lc ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021043000 Cover art: Young Mexican women dressed as La Catrina take part in Day of the Dead festivities in Oaxaca, Mexico, October 31, 2019. © Jan Sochor. Courtesy of the artist.

Dedicated to the memory of Patricia Pessar

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Contents

Acknowledgments xv A Note on Style  xvii Introduction 1

I  The Search for “Lo Mexicano”  11 The Mexican Character, Joel Poinsett 13 The Cosmic Race, José Vasconcelos  17 The Sons of La Malinche, Octavio Paz 22 The Problem of National Culture, Guillermo Bonfil Batalla 30 How to Tame a Wild Tongue, Gloria Anzaldúa 34 Mexico City 1992, Alma Guillermoprieto  45 Two Ranchera Songs, José Alfredo Jiménez and Cuco Sánchez 56

II  Ancient Civilizations  59 The Origins of the Aztecs, Anonymous 61 The Feast of the Flaying of Men, Inga Clendinnen 64 The Totocalli (Motecuhzoma’s “Zoo”), Andrés Bustamante Agudelo and Israel Elizalde Méndez 69 The Meaning of Maize for the Maya, J. Eric Thompson 81 Omens Foretelling the Conquest, Anonymous 86

III  Conquest and Colony  89 The Spaniards’ Entry into Tenochtitlán, Bernal Díaz del Castillo and Hernán Cortés 91 Cortés and Montezuma, J. H. Elliott 99 The Battles of Tenochtitlán and Tlatelolco, Anonymous 103 The Spiritual Conquest, Fray Jerónimo de Mendieta 108 Why the Indians Are Dying, Alonso de Zorita 116 A Baroque Archbishop-­Viceroy, Irving Leonard 125 On Men’s Hypocrisy, Sor Juana 137 xi

Whites, Negroes, and Castes, Alexander von Humboldt 141 The Itching Parrot, the Priest, and the Subdelegate, José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi 144

IV  Trials of the Young Republic  153 The Siege of Guanajuato, Lucas Alamán 155 Sentiments of the Nation, or Points Outlined by Morelos for the Constitution, José María Morelos 166 Plan of Iguala, Agustín de Iturbide 169 Women and War in Mexico, Frances Calderón de la Barca 173 The Glorious Revolution of 1844, Guillermo Prieto 182 Décimas Dedicated to Santa Anna’s Leg, Anonymous 189 A Conservative Profession of Faith, The Editors of El Tiempo  192 Considerations relating to the Political and Social Situation of the Mexican Republic in the Year 1847, Mariano Otero  197 Liberals and the Land, Luis González y González 209 Standard Plots and Rural Resistance, Raymond B. Craib 216 Offer of the Crown to Maximilian, Junta of Conservative Notables 226 A Letter from Mexico, Empress Carlota 228 The Triumph of the Republic, 1867, Benito Juárez 233 Porfirio Díaz Visits Yucatán, Channing Arnold and Frederick J. Tabor Frost 236 Scenes from a Lumber Camp, B. Traven 241 President Díaz, Hero of the Americas, James Creelman 247 Gift of the Skeletons, Anonymous 254

Special Section  What Can Photographs Tell Us about Mexico’s History?, John Mraz  257

V  Revolution  277 Land and Liberty, Ricardo Flores Magón 279 Plan of Ayala, Emiliano Zapata and Others 283 The Restoration of the Ejido, Luis Cabrera 288 Zapatistas in the Palace, Martín Luis Guzmán 295 Mexico Has Been Turned into a Hell, William O. Jenkins 300 Pancho Villa, John Reed 306 La Punitiva, Anonymous 314 Pedro Martínez, Oscar Lewis 317 Amelio Robles’s Gender Battles in the Zapatista Army, Gabriela Cano 328 Juan the Chamula, Ricardo Pozas 338 The Constitution of 1917: Articles 27 and 123  348 xii  Contents

An Agrarian Encounter, Rosalie Evans 353 Ode to Cuauhtémoc, Carlos Pellicer 356 The Socialist abc ’s, Anonymous 361 The Ballad of Valentín of the Sierra, Anonymous  367 Mexico Must Become a Nation of Institutions and Laws, Plutarco Elías Calles 370 The Formation of the Single-­Party State, Carlos Fuentes 375 The Rough-­and-­Tumble Career of Pedro Crespo, Gilbert M. Joseph and Allen Wells  377 A Convention in Zacapu, Salvador Lemus Fernández 387 The Agrarian Reform in La Laguna, Fernando Benítez 393 The Oil Expropriation, Josephus Daniels 399

VI  The Perils of Modernity  403 They Gave Us the Land, Juan Rulfo  407 Mexico’s Crisis, Daniel Cosío Villegas  412 Struggles of a Campesino Leader, Rubén Jaramillo 423 Art and Corruption, David Alfaro Siqueiros 433 The Two Faces of Acapulco during the Golden Age, Andrew Sackett 440 The Dark Deeds of “El Negro” Durazo, José González G. 448 The Sinking City, Joel Simon 455 Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl: Souls on the Run, Roberto Vallarino 467 Roma Exposes Mexico’s Darkest Secret, Marcela García 476 Modesta Gómez, Rosario Castellanos 482 La Costa Chica and the Struggles of Mexico’s “Third Root,” Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán  490 Images of Afro-­Mexican Mobilization on the Costa Chica in the 2010s, Various Photographers 494

VII  From the Ruins  499 The Student Movement of 1968, Elena Poniatowska 501 El Santo’s Strange Career, Anne Rubenstein 515 After the Earthquake, Victims’ Coordinating Council 524 Letters to Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, Anonymous 534 Identity Hour, or What Photos Would You Take of the Endless City? (From a Guide to Mexico City), Carlos Monsiváis 540 The Political Manifesto of the cocei of Juchitán, Oaxaca, The cocei  546 Women of Juchitán, Jeffrey W. Rubin 550 ezln Demands at the Dialogue Table, Zapatista Army of National Liberation  561

Contents  xiii

A Tzotzil Chronicleof the Zapatista Uprising, Marián Peres Tsu 569 Debtors’ Revenge: The Barzón Movement’s Struggle against Neoliberalism, Heather Williams 583

VIII  The Border and Beyond 595 The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Nicholas Trist, Luis Cuevas, Bernardo Couto, and Miguel Atristain 599 Plan of San Diego, Anonymous  604 The “Wetback Invasion,” Timothy J. Henderson 607 The High Cost of Deportation, Julia Preston 616 A Honduran Teenager’s Journey across Borders, Sonia Nazario 627 Two Poems about Immigrant Life, Pat Mora and Gina Valdés  645 The Maquiladora Workers of Juárez Find Their Voice, David Bacon  648 Dompe Days, Luis Alberto Urrea  654 Two Songs about Drug Smuggling, Paulino Vargas and Chalino Sánchez 662 “We Are More American,” Enrique Valencia  665

IX  From the Perfect Dictatorship to an Imperfect Democracy 667 Mexicans Would Not Be Bought, Coerced, Wayne A. Cornelius 679 Assessing nafta : Before and After, Mark Weisbrot and Vicente Fox 682 Ayotzinapa: A Father’s Testimony, John Gibler  687 The Narco Who Died Twice, Ioan Grillo  694 AMLO on Corruption, Andrés Manuel López Obrador  702 The Promise and Peril of López Obrador, Denise Dresser  708 Traditional Medicine in Modern Mexico and the Challenge of covid -­19, Gabriela Soto Laveaga and the Nich Ixim Midwives Movement 718 Should I Die Abroad, Bring Me Back to Mexico, Jorge Ramos  733   Suggestions for Further Reading  737 Acknowledgment of Copyrights and Sources  747 Index 757

xiv  Contents

Acknowledgments

Producing a new edition of a book this big on a country as diverse as ­Mexico —­­a task that now includes integrating the last two extremely consequential decades—­­necessarily incurs many debts. We are grateful to the many friends and colleagues—­­mexicólogos todos—­­who have shared their ideas, enthusiasm, and favorite selections with us over the long haul, ­and taught us a great deal about Mexico in the bargain. We are particularly indebted to those in the new cycle who helped us identify and edit selections, wrote new pieces, customized previous essays, advised on headnotes and captions, or contributed photographs and other graphics: David Brooks, Jürgen Buchenau, Andrés Bustamante Agudelo, Gabriela Cano, the Chiapas Midwives Movement of Nich Ixim (Maize Flower), Ted Cohen, Wayne Cornelius, Ray Craib, Denise Dresser, Israel Elizalde Méndez, Marcela García, Laura Lewis, John Mraz, Karren Pell, Julia Preston, Jeff Rubin, Jan Rus, Andrew Sackett, Gabriela Soto Laveaga, Monique Flores Ulysses, Mark Weisbrot, and Heather Williams. We are also grateful to series coeditor Orin Starn and to Gabriela Soto Laveaga, who consulted with us on the new edition’s selections and made many insightful suggestions about new areas of emphasis and particular readings. Gabriela’s assistance in directing us to new writings on Mexican science and indigenous medicine was particularly helpful. Ted Cohen provided equally welcome advice on key sources on Afro­-­Mexican identity and recent political mobilizations. Others provided invaluable research and administrative support. At Duke University Press, Whitney Wingate hunted for appropriate graphics in published sources and online; Peter Delgobbo ably translated several selections, tracked down permissions, and skillfully negotiated licensing fees; and Adhy Dong-­Hyun Kim, Robert Tate, and Joseph Ren assisted Peter in a variety of other tasks that were indispensable in preparing a behemoth of a manuscript for production. Jacqueline Ly ably produced the volume’s index. We also again want to acknowledge the timely financial and research support from several university departments that enabled us to launch the original edition of The Mexico Reader in the early 2000s: the Joint Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Illinois–Champaign and the University of Chicago, the Inter-­Library Loan Department of Auburn University at

xv

Montgomery, and the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies and the Council on Latin American and Iberian Studies at Yale University. Finally, we are especially grateful to three gifted and generous colleagues at Duke University Press. The late Valerie Millholland, for decades the press’s beloved senior editor for Latin American studies, invited us to prepare the first edition and did much to facilitate its timely completion. Gisela Fosado, Valerie’s dynamic successor as curator of Duke’s Latin American list and now the press’s editorial director, arranged for the funds and staff support that enabled us to think boldly about the second edition. Last but hardly least, we express enormous gratitude to Miriam Angress, the senior editor assigned to Duke’s World Readers series, who was indispensable in managing challenges and glimpsing opportunities, and who made our work more efficient and rewarding at every turn.

xvi  Acknowledgments

A Note on Style

In doing the translations for this volume we have attempted as much as possible to remain true to both the flavor and meaning of the original text. We have tried to choose English words that are as close as possible to the Spanish counterparts, though translation is an inexact science. In instances where it seemed essential to provide some further explanation, we have used brief and unobtrusive brackets whenever possible. At times, however, a brief endnote was in order. With respect to proper names, we have made a practice of rendering these as they appeared in the original text. Some names—­for example, Moctezuma—­have many different spellings, and several of those spellings appear in the pages to follow. We hope readers will bear with us. Many of the selected texts have been substantially abridged, and for this we offer apologies to the authors. In these cases, the pages of the original from which quotations have been selected appear in the “Acknowledgment of Copyrights and Sources” section.

xvii

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MEXICO

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Monterrey

Tampico PACIFIC

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Guadalajara

Querétaro Puebla

Mexico 100

200

Miles

Map of Mexico.

Mérida

Veracruz

FEDERAL DISTRICT

0

Gulf of Campeche

300

Acapulco

Oaxaca Gulf of Tehuantepec

San Cristóbal de Las Casas

Introduction

Mexico has always exercised a tremendous hold on the imagination of outsiders. Over the centuries, visitors have marveled at its tremendous economic possibilities and been lured by its “exotic,” expressive cultures. Standing atop one of the great pyramids of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán (now Mexico City) in 1519, Bernal Díaz del Castillo, one of the lieutenants of the Spanish conqueror Hernán Cortés, was barely able to contain his awe at the tableau that spread out before him: We were astounded at the great number of people and the quantities of merchandise, and at the orderliness . . . that prevailed, for we had never seen such a thing before. . . . Every kind of merchandise . . . had its fixed place . . . with dealers in gold, silver, and precious stones, feathers, cloaks, and embroidered goods, and male and female slaves to be sold in the market. .  .  . We saw pyramids and shrines in these cities that looked like gleaming white towers and castles: a marvelous sight to behold.1 Three centuries later, a “scientific conquistador,” the German Alexander von Humboldt (hailed in his time as “the monarch of the sciences”), spent a year of intense investigation in Mexico, then published a book in 1810 that celebrated the virtually boundless economic potential of Mexico’s agricultural and mineral resources. Observing that there was not a single plant in the rest of the world that could not grow in its soil, Baron von Humboldt predicted a bright future for Mexico.2 Almost two hundred years later, in the early 1990s, U.S. political and business leaders regaled the American public with latter-­ day images of a cornucopia of trade and investment that would be realized as soon as the United States ratified nafta (the North American Free Trade Agreement). Mexico’s cultural complex—­that is, both its aesthetic realm and its political culture—­has riveted foreigners at least as much as its enticing landscapes and natural resources. Enlightenment philosophes and nineteenth-­century liberal intellectuals were obsessed by the intriguing mixture of artistic achievement and bloodcurdling brutality—­of “civilization and barbarism”—­ that they saw as the hallmark of Mexico’s pre-­Columbian societies, most notably the Aztec empire. In the aftermath of Mexico’s epic revolution (1910–17), 1

norteamericanos, titillated (and unsettled) by the violent careers of telluric revolutionary chiefs like Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata and captivated by revolutionary artists like Diego Rivera, reencountered Mexico, celebrating the cultural and political triumphs of La Revolución. The “enormous vogue of things Mexican” among U.S. artists, intellectuals, and activists in the 1920s and 1930s, for example, played itself out on one level in a “discovery” of Mexico’s “timeless” and exotic popular culture. Rustic songs and dances, folk cuisine and handicrafts, the exuberant murals painted on the walls of public ministries and cantinas alike, “primitive” retablos, and the evocative woodcuts of Mexican revolutionary artist José Guadalupe Posada—­a ll generated a powerful romantic appeal among waves of “revolutionary tourists” disaffected with the excesses of U.S. capitalist society and modernity itself.3 Significantly, the new Mexican revolutionary state did what it could to promote these desires, eager to perpetuate notions of mexicanidad (Mexican-­ness) rooted in an “authentic” mestizo rural culture of which it was the legitimate custodian and beneficiary. In the decades that followed, as postrevolutionary governments “institutionalized” the revolution and “modernized” the country under the aegis of an immovable party, the message that the nation’s leaders wished to convey to the world was that Mexico was now, all at once, cosmopolitan, folkloric, and safe. Thus, the “Amigo Country” was both on the cutting edge of modernization and laid back; capable of staging high-­profile events like the Olympics and the World Cup but also impromptu dawn serenades by mariachis; a mecca simultaneously for high-­powered investors and countercultural (and more recently “eco”) tourists seeking a road less traveled.4 At the turn of the new millennium, one multinational tourist promotion trumpeted the attractions of the “new, exclusive Explorian Resort in tropical Mexico.” Here tourists in the post–Indiana Jones mold could rise early to bask in nature’s secluded, early-­morning splendors; ride motorbikes deep into the recesses of a Mayan jungle, spotting parrots and monkeys and unearthing ancient artifacts and treasures along the way; and then return in the afternoon to sample all the comforts, media, and excitements of a luxurious hotel and sports complex.5 In the world beyond the rhetoric of state builders and tourist promoters, however, modernity has been fraught with perils for Mexico. The Mexico Reader has assembled a wealth of materials that afford the reader an opportunity to reflect on the broader, uneven process whereby Mexico became “modern.” Read together, these selections call into question linear notions of modernization as an inexorable and overwhelming historical current. They show how Mexicans at all points on the social spectrum have both shaped and challenged the content, pace, and direction of modernization. In the process, the anthology unpacks the enduring images of Mexican political economy and culture that many foreigners nurture of Mexico—­images that 2  Introduction

are themselves an important dimension of Mexican history and in whose fashioning both Mexicans and outsiders have often colluded. Still, such cooperation has been uneven, and there have been frequent misunderstandings and painful “discordant encounters.” Over thirty-­five years ago, the longtime New York Times correspondent Alan Riding remarked in his influential book Distant Neighbors that no two countries that share a common border understand each other less than the United States and ­Mexico do6 —­a n observation that eerily rings true as this essay is being written, decades after the onset of nafta , during the age of Donald Trump. At this unsettled juncture it is particularly important for this collection to provide a deeper understanding in the North of our neighbor south of the Rio Grande. Any deeper understanding of Mexico must begin with an acknowledgment that, for all its historic economic potential and its much-­publicized entry into an “integrated” North American economy in the mid-­1990s, Mexico remains closer to its Third World past than to its supposedly inexorable First World destiny. A victim of periodic booms, disastrous meltdowns, fragile recoveries, and a global pandemic in recent decades, Mexico still has a per capita income of less than $10,000 a year, and 55 million of its 130 million citizens live in poverty, according to the Mexican government’s own data. Mexico has become the United States’ largest trading partner (surpassing China and Canada late in 2018, in the midst of President Trump’s escalating trade wars). Mexico has produced fabulous fortunes in business, politics, oil, and the drug trade, with more billionaires in recent decades than any other country save the oil emirates. Still, until as recently as the late 2010s, many tens of thousands of Mexicans were driven to migrate illegally to the United States each year, owing to a dearth of economic opportunities in the countryside or the cities. Quite simply, most Mexicans have remained outside the periodic booms of recent decades while participating fully in the busts that have preceded and followed them. Moreover, despite the pronouncements by Baron von Humboldt and others regarding the country’s agricultural and mineral abundance and the rich cultural endowments of its people, it has always been thus. These perpetual frustrations are partly explained by the country’s history, geography, and politics. Mexico has always presented formidable challenges to economic development and governance, in part owing to the tremendous diversity of its peoples, languages (even today there are still almost sixty indigenous languages spoken), and regions. No doubt the country’s notoriously difficult topography—­particularly the existence of two rugged cordilleras that run from north to south, effectively cutting off the western and eastern portions of the country from the central corridor, while isolating many of the center’s fertile valleys from one another—­has historically played an important role in the regionalization of the country. Even today in an age of globalization, the small farmer of Tamaulipas, who cultivates flat, irrigated fields of sorghum and speaks the mixed Spanish-­English border patois, can Introduction  3

hardly recognize a fellow countryman in the highland campesino of Chia­ pas, who speaks a Maya-­inflected version of castellano, if he speaks Spanish at all, and who tends a miserable plot of corn. In Mexico City, the teeming urban heart of Mexican civilization, high-­r ise buildings loom above colonial churches, which in turn overshadow the blackened ruins of the destroyed indigenous civilization. The city is home to the rich and powerful, but also to shantytown dwellers and street beggars. All of this makes Mexico difficult to grasp as an abstraction; it must be appreciated in its specificity. As the title of Lesley Byrd Simpson’s classic history makes clear, there are indeed “many Mexicos”—­a nd ruling them effectively has never been easy.7 The task of governing Mexico and unleashing its economic potential was made more formidable still by the lingering trauma of the Spanish conquest, and by a colonial legacy of exploitation, racism, and paternalistic authoritarian rule. It was further complicated by the extraordinary economic, political, and ideological power of the Roman Catholic Church, which has played dramatic, ambiguous, and often contradictory roles in the nation’s history. And it was embittered by the fact that, since independence at least, Mexico’s leadership has shown itself determined to doggedly pursue the chimera of “modernity.” Generations of would-­be reformers and social engineers—­ liberals, revolutionaries, and technocrats—­have found themselves repeatedly frustrated by stubborn Mexican realities. It has seemed to them that each time they have had their nation poised to make its debut in the company of “developed,” “First World” countries, they have been blindsided by some manifestation of what anthropologist Guillermo Bonfil Batalla has called “México profundo” (the old “deep Mexico”).8 The indigenous rebellion of the Zapatista National Liberation Army in Chiapas, which followed hot on the heels of the signing of nafta in 1994, is only a relatively recent case in point. And if the modernizers’ hopes have not been undone by recalcitrant internal forces, they have often been dealt the golpe de gracia by the perverse logic of the modern world economy itself, and Mexico’s highly vulnerable, dependent status in it, particularly vis-­à-­vis the United States. Thus, in the 1980s, the oil-­ export boom evaporated, leaving only a mountain of debt; in the mid-­1990s, the nation’s overvalued peso collapsed immediately after nafta was signed, and countless millions of dollars of portfolio (“hot money”) investment fled the country at the stroke of a keyboard. The post-­9/11 economic downturn in the United States was particularly onerous for Mexico. Then, in 2008, the precipitous recession brought on by overleveraged U.S. financial institutions created economic havoc south of the border. More recently, Trump’s aggressive “America First” agenda, epitomized by all manner of threats linked to immigration and his “Great Wall,” have wrought havoc with the value of the Mexican peso. Indeed, there have been few periods in Mexico’s national history that have not been characterized as times of “crisis.” Of course, for those Mexicans who do not share the “developmentalist” vision of their leaders, 4  Introduction

or whose families’ agrarian livelihoods and mores have been disrupted by it, terms such as crisis (and modernity itself) take on a very different meaning. While Mexico is certainly a unique and extraordinary country, it is also true that the multistranded examination of Mexican history, culture, and politics presented in this volume can shed a good deal of light on central problems facing nations in the global South as a whole. Specifically, Mexico provides a compelling case study for examining such nations’ historical struggles to achieve effective modes of governance and sustainable economic growth. Although until recently many Americans often took political stability and economic growth for granted, throughout most of the global South—­ and certainly in Latin America—­two hundred years after the achievement of formal independence there is still no tried-­a nd-­true formula for political stability and broad-­based economic development. Why is this the case? Why, on virtually every economic and social indicator, are the Latin American nations (not to mention most of their African and Asian counterparts) so far behind the United States, which won its independence at roughly the same time? Why—­despite the dazzling fortunes of a favored few—­is the gap between North and South apparently widening, notwithstanding all the optimistic forecasts that were made at the onset of nafta and the market-­d riven “New World Order”? And, finally, what roles have the United States and other foreign powers played in the quest of countries such as Mexico to attain effective, representative governance and balanced economic development? The themes explored by our contributors will provide grist for discussion and debate of these and many other questions. At the core of the volume lies an attempt to convey something of the multiple histories of Mexico’s development as a nation—­h istories “from above,” “from below,” and in between; histories shaped by forces and agents inside and outside the country. Unlike much of the prevailing pedagogical literature on Mexico, The Mexico Reader seeks to show how these histories intersect, illuminating the tension between long-­r unning processes of global economic expansion, nation-­state formation, and the responses these larger trends have produced at the grassroots level. In this sense, the volume will likely pose a challenge to many introductory texts on Mexico, since the linkages between the state’s political-­ economic and cultural projects of transformation, on the one hand, and local equations of resistance, accommodation, negotiation, and popular empowerment, on the other, are at once central to the Mexican past and still not adequately understood. Thus, this volume seeks to integrate political-­economy and cultural approaches in an effort to understand the past and present of a complex society and tease out the manner in which the former has shaped the latter. While we strive to present a broad range of perspectives and eschew reductionist renditions of history, such as overwrought theories of “imperialism” or “dependency,” we also seek to avoid a “postmodern carnival of polyphony.” 9 Introduction  5

This anthology examines a country whose history is bound up with what Mexico’s late Nobel laureate Octavio Paz famously described as “cycles of conquest.” 10 Not for nothing, then, do we take pains to examine the structures of power and privilege—­caste and class, ethno-­racial, gendered, and generational—­that have undergirded Mexican society. Some of the readings focus on enduring forms of class exploitation; others suggest how gender ideologies interlock with hierarchies of class, race, and ethnicity, giving the lie to the kind of unitary notions of Mexican-­ness that postrevolutionary state builders advanced throughout the twentieth century. The collection underscores that class oppression does not eliminate ethno-­racial, gendered, or generational identities, though it may speak through them with important consequences for collective political action. The volume also demonstrates that although it is fashionable these days to bash Marxian theories of imperialism and dependency—­and, to be sure, their simple correlation of “Third World” ills with First World domination often caricatures more than it explains—­foreign intervention runs throughout the course of Mexican history and has been an unmistakable factor in the nation’s poverty and internal conflicts. Guided by these larger questions, goals, and assumptions, our criteria for selecting pieces for this anthology have been relatively straightforward. First, we have sought to evoke a variety of actors and environments, so that the patterned complexity of muchos Méxicos will emerge vividly over the centuries, in a manner that inflects the country’s class, ethno-­racial, gender, generational, regional, and ideological axes of difference. Second, we have put a premium on Mexican voices that are of critical importance but often inaccessible to English-­speaking readers. Many of the selections, therefore, appear for the first time in translation. Third, we have made every effort to avoid readings that are arcane or overly technical, or require extensive previous knowledge of a given topic. Most of the pieces we have chosen were originally written for a general audience; each, we hope, will be successful in clarifying issues, piquing interest, and stimulating thought. Finally, the new edition has sought to introduce readers to new topics and approaches to Mexican history and affairs in recent decades, particularly a greater interest in ethnicity and race, gender and sexuality, immigration, health and medicine, narcoviolence, and the meaning of democracy. The introduction of new material has obliged us to “retire” some selections from the original edition and to pare down others. Most of the readings are relatively short, but we have included a final section offering suggestions for further reading for those who wish to delve more deeply. The timing of this anthology’s second edition, like the volume’s initial appearance in 2002, is quite propitious. The last two decades have witnessed watershed elections (in 2000 and 2018) that have roughly coincided with the publication of The Mexico Reader’s two editions. We have made an effort, 6  Introduction

particularly in the new volume’s last two sections—­on the Mexico-­U.S. border and the transition from a so-­called perfect dictatorship to a besieged democracy, respectively—­to take stock of these tumultuous decades that have critically reoriented Mexican society. The first edition followed closely upon the historic elections of July 2000, in which the virtual political monopoly of Mexico’s ruling party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (pri)—­long threatened by the growing assertiveness of nongovernmental organizations, indigenous rebels, opposition forces on the right and left, and a public weary of crisis and corruption—­was definitively broken. Unfortunately, the years that followed have brought Mexico’s nascent democracy to the breaking point, prompting a succession of right-­and left-­of-­center parties (including, briefly, an allegedly new version of the pri), and an array of movements in civil society to attempt to reshape or at least stabilize Mexico in the face of widening social inequality, burgeoning narcoviolence, and growing corruption and impunity. The year 2018 seemed to mark a defining moment, as Andrés Manuel López Obrador (better known by his acronym, AMLO), became Mexico’s first leftist president in more than seven decades, since Lázaro Cárdenas’s administration in the late 1930s. His renovating government appeared to represent the last wave of Latin America’s reformist Pink Tide, which had significantly ebbed over the course of the preceding decade. Yet as this volume went into production amid the covid pandemic, it remains to be seen whether AMLO’s administration—­still benefiting from the popularity of his resounding electoral victory and controlling both chambers of Congress—­w ill mark a genuine break from the past or succumb to the same structural legacies and political-­economic and conjunctural problems that plagued his more conservative predecessors. Unfortunately, so much that we read and hear about Mexico these days comes to us in the heat of the moment—­in polemical, sometimes xenophobic sound bites served up in a climate of fear about Mexico and much of the global South. These sound bites and images emanate from the mainstream press, Congress, Hollywood, partisan cable tv and talk radio, social media, and (last but sadly not least in recent years) the White House. Typically they single out the activities of “illegal aliens,” or the epidemic of drugs, or border violence, vulnerability to terrorism, and homeland insecurity. Sometimes they belittlingly refer to Mexico as a “failed state,” or as a society that sends us its dregs—­murderers, rapists, and “bad hombres.” Or they emphasize the loss of American jobs due to nafta and more recently proposed trade pacts. Of course, stripped of hype and hyperbole, most of these polemical images and sound bites gesture to real and threatening problems. But what we hope to accomplish in this volume is to embed these preoccupations in meaningful context: particularly in the historical context of unequal yet interdependent relations between Mexico and the United States, and in the structural inequalities and differences that have always divided Mexicans themselves. Introduction  7

In this manner we hope to introduce a new generation of North Americans to their southern neighbor in a way that will make them at once more sympathetic toward Mexico’s historical problems and more appreciative of its cultural richness and transformative potential. The book contains nine parts. Part I examines the theme of mexicanidad. It inquires into the reasons behind the national obsession with “Mexican-­ ness” and chronicles the attempts by generations of thinkers and politicians to celebrate or deconstruct the national essence, to find some sort of Mexican archetype. While consensus on the issue is obviously impossible, more certain is the construction or politicization of “national character” by the postrevolutionary state and its successors to legitimize their rule. Parts II through V examine Mexico’s history from pre-­Columbian times through the consolidation of the Mexican revolution at the conclusion of the administration of President Lázaro Cárdenas in 1940. The country’s historical evolution has profoundly influenced present-­day Mexico and will powerfully shape the nation’s prospects in the twenty-­fi rst century. These sections are designed to be of interest in themselves, but they also foreground the themes we take up in parts VI through IX, which are almost entirely dedicated to Mexico since 1940. These final sections, which focus on the contradictions and costs of postrevolutionary modernization, the rise of civil society (particularly since 1968), and the multiple challenges that Mexico’s fledgling democracy has faced since the once-­hegemonic Institutional Revolutionary Party was defeated at the ballot box in 2000, are designed to resonate with one another. They are also intended to provoke discussion about the complicated relations between a new Mexico—­a nd a new United States—­whose citizens, as anthropologist Arjun Appadurai aptly put it, are no longer as “tightly territorialized [and] spatially bounded,” and where such fundamental categories as “foreign” and “domestic” become increasingly blurred.11 Notes 1. Bernal Díaz del Castillo, The Conquest of New Spain, translated by J. M. Cohen (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1963), 232–35. More of Díaz del Castillo’s classic eyewitness account appears in part III of this volume. 2. José Miranda, Humboldt y México (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1962). 3. Helen Delpar, The Enormous Vogue of Things Mexican: Cultural Relations between the United States and Mexico, 1920–1935 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1992). 4. Gilbert M. Joseph, Anne Rubenstein, and Eric Zolov, eds., Fragments of a Golden Age: The Politics of Culture in Mexico since 1940 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001); see especially the editors’ introduction, “Assembling the Fragments: Writing a Cultural History of Mexico since 1940,” 3–22, and the essay by Zolov, “Discovering a Land ‘Mysterious and Obvious’: The Renarrativizing of Postrevolutionary Mexico,” 234–72. 5. This promotion was aired frequently on New York radio stations in 2000.

8  Introduction

6. Alan Riding, Distant Neighbors: A Portrait of the Mexicans (New York: Vintage Books, 1986), ix–xi. 7. Lesley Byrd Simpson, Many Mexicos, 4th ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974). 8. Guillermo Bonfils Batalla, México Profundo: Reclaiming a Civilization, trans. Philip Dennis (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996). A selection from México Profundo appears in part I of this volume. 9. Orin Starn, Carlos Iván Degregori, and Robin Kirk, eds., The Peru Reader: History, Culture, Politics (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995), 9. 10. Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude and Other Writings, trans. Lysander Kemp, Yara Milos, and Rachael Phillips Belash (New York: Grove, 1985). A selection from The Labyrinth of Solitude appears in part I of this volume. 11. Arjun Appadurai, “Global Ethnoscapes: Notes and Queries for a Transnational Anthropology,” in Recapturing Anthropology: Working in the Present (Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research, 1991), 191; see also Gilbert M. Joseph, “Close Encounters: Towards a New Cultural History of U.S.–Latin American Relations,” in Close Encounters of Empire: Writing the Cultural History of U.S.–Latin American Relations, ed. Gilbert M. Joseph, Catherine C. LeGrand, and Ricardo D. Salvadore (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998), 3–4.

Introduction  9

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I The Search for “Lo Mexicano”

Since the concepts of “nationality” and “nationalism” came into existence some two centuries ago, it has been a common presumption that different peoples exhibit characteristics peculiarly their own. The term nation itself, which is derived from the Latin natio, meaning “birth,” suggests something innate and inevitable, traits shaped by genetics and environment—­traits that can be analyzed, but changed only with great difficulty. Mexicans, perhaps more than most peoples, have long been preoccupied with defining what it means to be Mexican, such that the terms lo mexicano and mexicanidad have become standard intellectual fare. Yet musings on the topic have seldom been celebrations of Mexico’s vibrant national spirit; they have more typically been tortured reflections on the country’s apparent inability to emerge from a prolonged and troubled adolescence. Some have sought explanations in the social structures inherited from centuries of colonial rule; others have located the problem in the unique attributes of the Mexican “race.” Among the first to adopt this latter perspective were foreigners like U.S. Minister Joel Poinsett, who held that the Mexican “race” was weak and degenerate. The advent of modern psychology led to more nuanced and sympathetic analyses, such as those of Octavio Paz and his mentor, the psychologist Samuel Ramos. These have been criticized for exaggerating supposed personality traits and reifying culture. Recent “postmodern” thinkers tend likewise to be skeptical of analyses that find unalterable attributes of different nationalities, since nationality often comes to seem a polite code word for race. Race, these thinkers claim, is more a “social construction” than a matter of biology. Moreover, the postrevolutionary Mexican state seized upon some of the supposed elements of “mexicanidad” to legitimize and sustain its rule, adding an unfortunate political dimension to the question. While consensus on so slippery an issue is clearly impossible, we present in this section several classic statements on the topic of the Mexican character. Fundamentally, most seek to account for the apparent fact that Mexico has not quite become “modern,” positing characteristics that are profoundly at odds with those commonly attributed to North Americans or Northern Europeans. The penultimate selection, by Gloria Anzaldúa, a noted Mexican 11

American poet and one of the pioneers of Chicano studies and postcolonial feminist theory, brings an assertive transborder and gendered dimension to mexicanidad, a literature largely known for its masculinist sensibilities. The final reading by Alma Guillermoprieto, written as the Mexican government campaigned to enter the North American Free Trade Agreement in the early 1990s, poses a crucial question: In this age of globalization of capital and media, could the image of “lo mexicano”—­whether we view it as a good or bad thing—­be threatened finally with extinction?

12  The Search for “Lo Mexicano”

The Mexican Character Joel Poinsett

Today, Joel Roberts Poinsett’s chief claim to fame in the United States is as the man who brought home the Mexican “Christmas Eve flower,” which came to be called the poinsettia. Despite this innocent association, however, few figures in Mexican history have excited quite such passionate controversy. Born in Charleston, South Carolina, Poinsett (1779–1851) first became involved in Latin American affairs in 1811 as special envoy from President James Monroe to Chile. Returning to the United States in 1813, he pursued a political career in the South Carolina legislature and in the U.S. House of Representatives, to which he was elected in 1821. In 1822 he traveled to the Mexico of Agustín Iturbide and authored a short book on the subject, Notes on Mexico. In 1825 he was appointed U.S. Minister to Mexico. He later would serve as secretary of war in the cabinet of President Martin Van Buren. From the outset of his tenure as minister to Mexico, Poinsett was an outspoken proponent of U.S.-­style liberalism: decentralized, constitutional, republican government; anticlericalism; and free trade. A substantial number of influential Mexicans found such activity decidedly pernicious, and their antipathy toward him was exacerbated by the fact that the minister advocated extending the southern boundary of the United States to the Rio Grande. Poinsett found like-­minded cohorts in the York Rite Masonic Lodge, which he helped to organize in Mexico. The York Rite Masons (or Yorkinos) were rivals of the Scottish Rite Masons (or Escoceses), and the two lodges increasingly emerged as bitter, secretive political clubs. The sub rosa nature of these political organizations was conducive to conspiratorial thinking, and Conservative Escoceses became increasingly convinced that Poinsett was a subversive foreign agent seeking deliberately to weaken and undermine Mexico. As will be seen from the following excerpt from an 1829 letter to Secretary of State Martin Van Buren, Poinsett had a pessimistic view of the Mexican character and of the nation’s potential for progress. Poinsett’s generalizations might serve as a compendium of North American stereotypes of Mexicans to this day. The character of this people cannot be understood, nor the causes of their present condition be fully developed without recurring to the oppression under which they formerly laboured. It would lead you into error to compare them with the free and civilized nations of America and Europe in the Nine13

teenth Century. They started from a period nearer to the age of Charles the fifth, and it is even a matter of some doubt whether this Nation had advanced one step in knowledge and civilization, from the time of the conquest to the moment of declaring themselves Independent. No portion of the Spanish dominions in America was watched over by the Mother Country with such jealous care as Mexico. Its comparatively dense population, its extensive and fertile territory, its rich and varied productions, and especially its mineral wealth, rendered it a source of great profit to Spain; while the history of the ancient splendour of Mexico, and the glory of its conquest could not fail to enhance the value of its possession in the eyes of that chivalrous people. In order to preserve that possession every precaution was taken that human prudence could devise to prevent the access of strangers to Mexico and to keep the people in profound ignorance of their own strength and resources as well as of their relative position with regard to other Nations. . . . The nobility and gentry then as now, inhabited spacious hotels, built after the fashion of those of the mother Country, solid and substantial; but still more destitute of all comfort or convenience. Their style of living was not generous or hospitable, although they sometimes gave costly and ostentatious entertainments. From their absurd pretensions to rank and from their unmeaning jealousy of each other, there never did exist that social intercourse among the higher orders, which in every other Country forms the chief charm of life. Here every man of distinction considered it beneath his dignity to visit his friends or neighbours, and remained in his own house, where in a large gloomy apartment dimly lighted and miserably furnished he received a few visitors of inferior rank who formed his tertulia [social gathering] of every night. It is not to be wondered at therefore that the sons of these men, equally uneducated with themselves, fled from the gloomy mansions of their fathers to the Theatre, the coffee houses or the gambling table; and this circumstance united to the absence of all excitement to industry, from the preference given by the Council of the Indies to Europeans for all appointments, rendered the Aristocracy of Mexico an ignorant and immoral race. The same state of society existed among the higher orders of the clergy and marked their character in the same unfavorable manner. The regular clergy, formed from the very dregs of the people, was then and is now disgustingly debauched and ignorant. They have lost the influence they formerly possessed over the common people, and so sensible are they of the universal contempt which they have brought upon themselves by their unworthy conduct, that they would not oppose a thorough reform of their orders if the Government had courage to attempt it. But what more particularly distinguishes the condition of the people in the Spanish colonies is the character of the labouring classes. That portion of America conquered by Spain was inhabited by a people in a high state of civilization for the age in which they lived. The higher classes fell [as] a sacri14  Joel Poinsett

fice to the cruelty and rapacity of their Conquerors, and the common people were reduced to a state of the most abject slavery. The existence of this degraded race had a singular effect upon the character of the Spanish Settler. The poorest white man scorned to be placed on a level with the unfortunate Indian. His colour ennobled him, and Spaniards and their descendants would have perished rather than degrade their caste in America by working in the field, or by following any other laborious occupation in which the Indians are habitually employed. Here therefore is wanting that portion of a community which forms the strength of every nation, but especially of a Republic, a free and virtuous peasantry. The Indians cannot as yet be regarded in that light. They are laborious, patient and submissive, but are lamentably ignorant. They are emerging slowly from the wretched state to which they had been reduced; but they must be educated and released from the gross superstition under which they now labour before they can be expected to feel an interest in public affairs. The only political feeling these people now possess is a bitter hatred of the Spaniards or Gachupines as they call them, a hatred which has never ceased to exist, and which has been kept alive both by tradition and by constantly recurring instances of cruelty and oppression. Less attention has been paid by this Government to the establishment of primary schools than in any other part of Spanish America. This has been a lamentable oversight, for not only do the great mass of the population require to be educated in order that the real principles of a representative Government may be carried fully into operation; but to inspire them with a decent pride and to induce them to more constant labour and to employ their earnings in rendering their habitations comfortable and in purchasing clothing for themselves and their families. At present seven eighths of the population live in wretched hovels destitute of the most ordinary conveniences. Their only furniture a few coarse mats to sit and sleep on, their food indian corn, pepper and pulse [legumes], and their clothing miserably coarse and scanty. It is not that the low price of labor prevents them from earning a more comfortable subsistence in spite of the numerous festivals in each year, but they either gamble away their money, or employ it in pageants of the Catholic Church, in which pagan and Christian rites are strangely mingled. All these evils, if not cured entirely, would be greatly mitigated by education. . . . It appears then that the successful precautions taken by Spain to prevent all intercourse between Mexico and other Countries prevented the light of knowledge from penetrating into this Country. Not only were the Mexicans deprived of the means of keeping pace with the rapid progress of knowledge in other Countries during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; but the peculiar circumstances in which they were placed scarcely allowed them to retain the station they occupied at the time of the conquest. The emigrants from Spain who alone were permitted to settle in the Country were among the most ignorant and vicious of that people, who are notoriously a century The Mexican Character  15

behind the rest of Christian Europe. They were for the most part the favorites of great men, and came to lord over the creole, to occupy all the offices of honor and emolument and to keep the natives in subjection. As has been already remarked, one mode of effecting this object was to keep them even more ignorant than they were themselves. They were assisted in their efforts to this effect by a variety of causes. The want of means of acquiring knowledge, the absence of all excitement to exertion, the facility of procuring the means of subsistence almost without labour, a mild and enervating climate and their constant intercourse with the aborigines, who were and still are degraded to the very lowest class of human beings, all contributed to render the Mexicans a more ignorant and debauched people than their ancestors had been. Another cause operated still more strongly to produce this effect. The puerile ceremonies of their worship, and the excessive ignorance and shocking profligacy of the clergy. The creoles were taught from their infancy to revere their pastors as Superior beings and it is not therefore surprising that their pernicious example should have produced such melancholy results. When therefore we examine the actual condition of this people, we ought always to bear in mind the point from which they set out. They were in every respect, far behind the mother Country which is notoriously very inferior in moral improvement to all other Nations. They were not even equal to the other Spanish colonies in America, because their comparative importance and their vicinity to the United States rendered Spain more vigilant in preventing all intercourse with foreigners as well as the introduction of all works, which could enlighten their minds and inspire them with liberal ideas.

16  Joel Poinsett

The Cosmic Race José Vasconcelos

José Vasconcelos (1882–1959) was among the most important and influential Mexican intellectuals of the twentieth century. His childhood was spent partly on the U.S.Mexico border, where he attended schools in Eagle Pass, Texas. During his formative years, Vasconcelos developed a profound suspicion of Americans, whom he viewed as crassly pragmatic, arrogant, shallow, aggressive, and lacking in spirituality. Undoubtedly, he was also offended by the fact that many Americans continued to endorse ideas like those espoused earlier in the century by their compatriot Joel Poinsett. Like certain other Latin Americans of the turn of the century—­such as the Uruguayan philosopher José Enrique Rodó, the Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío, and the Cuban patriot José Martí—­Vasconcelos’s thought developed in part as a reaction against North America and its materialistic values. He felt that Latin Americans must avoid imitating American culture, and that in order to do that successfully they would need a guiding philosophy, one that celebrated their strengths and virtues. In this spirit, he argued that the Latin American mestizo constituted a new race, a “cosmic race,” which combined the virtues of Indians and Europeans. This, Vasconcelos believed, would be the race of the future. While Vasconcelos’s theory turned the white supremacist racism of the day on its head, it remains at heart a racist theory. By imputing inevitable characteristics to the various races of the earth, Vasconcelos engages in rather reckless stereotyping. His romantic notion of the spiritual essence of his people and of the soullessness of Anglo-­Saxon culture, together with his increasing bitterness at the course of events in Mexico, would lead him to embrace fascism and anti-­Semitism during World War II. For all his failings, Vasconcelos remains a uniquely engaging figure. Active in the Mexican revolution from its earliest days, he would serve as Mexico’s secretary of education, and in this capacity he acted with boundless energy and idealism. An advocate of Indian literacy, he greatly increased the presence of education in the countryside; his Ministry of Public Education produced massive numbers of inexpensive workbooks and textbooks; and the ministry’s Department of Fine Arts sponsored the work of some of Mexico’s greatest modern artists, including the muralists Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, as well as musicians Manuel M. Ponce and Julián Carrillo. At odds with the Mexican government after 1924, he

17

ran unsuccessfully for president in 1929 in an energetic campaign plagued by violence and fraud on the part of the newly formed official government party. Greece laid the foundations of Western or European civilization; the white civilization that, upon expanding, reached the forgotten shores of the American continent in order to consummate the task of re-­civilization and re-­population. Thus we have the four stages and the four racial trunks: the Black, the Indian, the Mongol, and the White. The latter, after organizing itself in Europe, has become the invader of the world, and has considered itself destined to rule, as did each of the previous races during their time of power. It is clear that domination by the whites will also be temporary, but their mission is to serve as a bridge. The white race has brought the world to a state in which all human types and cultures will be able to fuse with each other. The civilization developed and organized in our times by the whites has set the moral and material basis for the union of all men into a fifth universal race, the fruit of all the previous ones and amelioration of everything past. . . . Let us recognize that it was a disgrace not to have proceeded with the cohesion demonstrated by those to the north, that prodigious race which we are accustomed to lavish with insults only because they have won each hand at the secular fight. They triumph because they join to their practical talents the clear vision of a great destiny. They keep present the intuition of a definite historical mission, while we get lost in the labyrinth of verbal chimeras. It seems as if God Himself guided the steps of the Anglo-­Saxon cause, while we kill each other on account of dogma or declare ourselves atheists. How those mighty empire builders must laugh at our groundless arrogance and Latin vanity! They do not clutter their mind with the Ciceronian weight of phraseology, nor have they in their blood the contradictory instincts of a mixture of dissimilar races, but they committed the sin of destroying those races, while we assimilated them, and this gives us new rights and hopes for a mission without precedent in History. For this reason, adverse obstacles do not move us to surrender, for we vaguely feel that they will help us to discover our way. Precisely in our differences, we find the way. If we simply imitate, we lose. If we discover and create, we shall overcome. The advantage of our tradition is that it has greater facility of sympathy toward strangers. This implies that our civilization, with all defects, may be the chosen one to assimilate and to transform mankind into a new type; that within our civilization, the warp, the multiple and rich plasma of future humanity is thus being prepared. This mandate from History is first noticed in that abundance of love that allowed the Spaniard to create a new race with the Indian and the Black, profusely spreading white ancestry through the soldier who begat a native family, and Occidental culture through the doctrine and example of the missionaries who placed the Indians in condition to enter into the new stage. .  .  . Spanish colonization 18  José Vasconcelos

José Clemente Orozco, Cortés and La Malinche, 1926, mural, Colegio de San Ildefonso, Mexico City. The image depicts the naked figures of Mexico’s Spanish conqueror and his guide and interpreter, an exiled Aztec woman popularly known as “La Malinche.” Malinche played a pivotal role in the conquest, subsequently becoming Cortés’s mistress and bearing him a son who is sometimes seen as a progenitor of mestizaje, or the mixing of the European and indigenous races. The two central figures contrast starkly: Cortés is white and powerful, while Malinche is brown and vulnerable. Another figure, possibly representing the new race born of this union, lies prostrate under the conqueror’s foot. The expressions and body language of the three figures have been variously interpreted, hinting at the complexity and ambivalence inherent in the race and gender relations born of the conquest.

c­ reated mixed races, this signals its character, fixes its responsibility, and defines its future. The English kept on mixing only with the whites and annihilated the natives. Even today, they continue to annihilate them in a sordid and economic fight, more efficient yet than armed conquest. This proves their limitation and is indication of their decadence. The situation is equivalent, in a larger scale, to the incestuous marriages of the pharaohs which undermined the virtues of the race; and it contradicts the ulterior goals of History to attain the fusion of peoples and cultures. To build an English world and to exterminate the red man, so that Northern Europe could be renovated all over an America made up with pure whites, is no more than a repetition of the triumphant process of a conquering race. This was already attempted by the red man and by all strong and homogeneous races, but it does not solve the human problem. America was not kept in reserve for five thousand years for such a petty goal. The purpose of the new and ancient continent is much more important. Its predestination obeys the design of constituting the cradle of a fifth race into which all nations will fuse with each other to replace the four races that have been forging History apart from each other. The dispersion will come to an end on American soil; unity will be consummated there by the triumph of fecund love and the improvement of all the human races. In this fashion, the synthetic race that shall gather all the treasures of History in order to give expression to universal desire shall be created. . . . The so-­called Latin peoples . . . are the ones called upon to consummate this mission. . . . [They] insist on not taking the ethnic factor too much into account for their sexual relations, perhaps because from the beginning they are not, properly speaking, Latins but a conglomeration of different types and races. Whatever opinions one may express in this respect, and whatever repugnance caused by prejudice one may harbor, the truth is that the mixture of races has taken place and continues to be consummated. It is in this fusion of ethnic stocks that we should look for the fundamental characteristic of Ibero-­A merican idiosyncrasy. . . . In Latin America . . . a thousand bridges are available for the sincere and cordial fusion of all races. The ethnic barricading of those to the north in contrast to the much more open sympathy of those to the south is the most important factor, and at the same time, the most favorable to us, if one reflects even superficially upon the future, because it will be seen immediately that we belong to tomorrow, while the Anglo-­Saxons are gradually becoming more a part of yesterday. The Yankees will end up building the last great empire of a single race, the final empire of White supremacy. Meanwhile, we will continue to suffer the vast chaos of an ethnic stock in formation, contaminated by the fermentation of all types, but secure of the avatar into a better race. In Spanish America, Nature will no longer repeat one of her partial attempts. This time, the race that will come out of the forgotten Atlantis will no longer be a race of a single color 20  José Vasconcelos

or of particular features. The future race will not be a fifth, or a sixth race, destined to prevail over its ancestors. What is going to emerge out there is the definitive race, the synthetical race, the integral race, made up of the genius and the blood of all peoples and, for that reason, more capable of true brotherhood and of a truly universal vision. . . . How different the sounds of the Ibero-­A merican development [from that of the Anglo-­Saxons]! They resemble the profound scherzo of a deep and infinite symphony: Voices that bring accents from Atlantis; depths contained in the pupil of the red man, who knew so much, so many thousand years ago, and now seems to have forgotten everything. His soul resembles the old Mayan cenote [natural well] of green waters, laying deep and still, in the middle of the forest, for so many centuries since, that not even its legend remains anymore. This infinite quietude is stirred with the drop put in our blood by the Black, eager for sensual joy, intoxicated with dances and unbridled lust. There also appears the Mongol, with the mystery of his slanted eyes that see everything according to a strange angle, and discover I know not what folds and newer dimensions. The clear mind of the White, that resembles his skin and his dreams, also intervenes. Judaic striae hidden within the Castilian blood since the days of the cruel expulsion now reveal themselves, along with Arabian melancholy, as a remainder of the sickly Muslim sensuality. Who has not a little of all this, or does not wish to have all? There is the Hindu, who also will come, who has already arrived by way of the spirit, and although he is the last one to arrive, he seems the closest relative. . . . So many races that have come and others that will come. In this manner, a sensitive and ample heart will be taking shape within us; a heart that embraces and contains everything and is moved with sympathy, but, full of vigor, imposes new laws upon the world. . . . We in America shall arrive, before any other part of the world, at the creation of a new race fashioned out of the treasures of all the previous ones: The final race, the cosmic race.

The Cosmic Race  21

The Sons of La Malinche Octavio Paz

Without a doubt, the most famous essay ever written about “mexicanidad” is Octavio Paz’s The Labyrinth of Solitude, which first appeared in the influential journal Cuadernos Americanos in 1950. Paz (1914–98) was by then already a major figure in Mexican poetry, and the book marked his brilliant debut as an essayist. The essay is a dizzying intellectual exercise, seeking to explain the Mexican’s “hermetic” personality through an allusive, though at times opaque, combination of Jungian psychology, poetic imagery, and historical analysis. Paz held that Mexico was intent on denying its true heritage, that its evolution was retarded by repeated cycles of conquest, violation, and revolution, and that centuries of history were embedded in the Mexican character. Paz’s literary career began in the early 1930s. He fought on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War and later undertook a diplomatic career, which included posts in France, India, Japan, and Switzerland. He quit this career in 1968 in protest against the government killings of student protestors at the Plaza de Tlatelolco (see part VII of this volume). While he remained very critical of the Mexican political system, he became increasingly conservative in his later years, which often placed him at odds with other Latin American intellectuals. In 1990 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. All of our anxious tensions express themselves in a phrase we use when anger, joy, or enthusiasm cause us to exalt our condition as Mexicans: “¡Viva México, hijos de la chingada!” This phrase is a true battle cry, charged with a peculiar electricity; it is a challenge and an affirmation, a shot fired against an imaginary enemy, and an explosion in the air. Once again, with a certain pathetic and plastic fatality, we are presented with the image of a skyrocket that climbs into the sky, bursts in a shower of sparks and then falls in darkness. Or with the image of that howl that ends all our songs and possesses the same ambiguous resonance: an angry joy, a destructive affirmation ripping open the breast and consuming itself. When we shout this cry on the fifteenth of September, the anniversary of our independence, we affirm ourselves in front of, against and in spite of the “others.” Who are the “others”? They are the hijos de la chingada: strangers, 22

bad Mexicans, our enemies, our rivals. In any case, the “others,” that is, all those who are not as we are. And these “others” are not defined except as the sons of a mother as vague and indeterminate as themselves. Who is the Chingada? Above all, she is the Mother. Not a Mother of flesh and blood but a mythical figure. The Chingada is one of the Mexican representations of Maternity, like La Llorona or the “long-­suffering Mexican mother” 1 we celebrate on the tenth of May. The Chingada is the mother who has suffered—­metaphorically or actually—­the corrosive and defaming action implicit in the verb that gives her her name. . . . In Mexico the word [chingar] has innumerable meanings. It is a magical word: a change of tone, a change of inflection, is enough to change its meaning. It has as many shadings as it has intonations, as many meanings as it has emotions. One may be a chingón, a gran chingón (in business, in politics, in crime or with women), or a chingaquedito (silent, deceptive, fashioning plots in the shadows, advancing cautiously and then striking with a club), or a chingoncito. But in this plurality of meanings the ultimate meaning always contains the idea of aggression, whether it is the simple act of molesting, pricking or censuring, or the violent act of wounding or killing. The verb denotes violence, an emergence from oneself to penetrate another by force. It also means to injure, to lacerate, to violate—­bodies, souls, objects—­a nd to destroy. When something breaks, we say: “Se chingó.” When someone behaves rashly, in defiance of the rules, we say: “Hizo una chingadera.” The idea of breaking, of ripping open, appears in a great many of these expressions. The word has sexual connotations but it is not a synonym for the sexual act: one may chingar a woman without actually possessing her. And when it does allude to the sexual act, violation or deception gives it a particular shading. The man who commits it never does so with the consent of the chingada. Chingar, then, is to do violence to another. The verb is masculine, active, cruel: it stings, wounds, gashes, stains. And it provokes a bitter, resentful satisfaction. The person who suffers this action is passive, inert and open, in contrast to the active, aggressive and closed person who inflicts it. The chingón is the macho, the male; he rips open the chingada, the female, who is pure passivity, defenseless against the exterior world. The relationship between them is violent, and it is determined by the cynical power of the first and the impotence of the second. The idea of violence rules darkly over all the meanings of the word, and the dialectic of the “closed” and the “open” thus fulfills itself with an almost ferocious precision. The magic power of the word is intensified by the fact that it is prohibited. No one uses it casually in public. Only an excess of anger or a delirious enthusiasm justifies its use. It is a word that can only be heard among men or during the big fiestas. When we shout it out, we break a veil of silence, modesty or hypocrisy. We reveal ourselves as we really are. The forbidden words boil The Sons of La Malinche  23

up in us, just as our emotions boil up. When they finally burst out, they do so harshly, brutally, in the form of a shout, a challenge, an offense. They are projectiles or knives. They cause wounds. . . . If we take into account all of its various meanings, the word defines a great part of our life and qualifies our relationships with our friends and compatriots. To the Mexican there are only two possibilities in life: either he inflicts the actions implied by chingar on others, or else he suffers them himself at the hands of others. This conception of social life as combat fatally divides society into the strong and the weak. The strong—­the hard, unscrupulous chingones—­surround themselves with eager followers. This servility toward the strong, especially among the políticos (that is, the professionals of public business), is one of the more deplorable consequences of the situation. Another, no less degrading, is the devotion to personalities rather than to principles. Our politicians frequently mix public business with private. It does not matter. Their wealth or their influence in government allows them to maintain a flock of supporters whom the people call, most appositely, lambiscones (from the word lamer: “to lick”). The verb chingar—­malign and agile and playful, like a caged animal—­ creates many expressions that turn our world into a jungle: there are tigers in business, eagles in the schools and the army, lions among our friends. A bribe is called a “bite.” The bureaucrats gnaw their “bones” (public employment). And in a world of chingones, of difficult relationships, ruled by violence and suspicion—­a world in which no one opens out or surrenders himself—­ideas and accomplishments count for little. The only thing of value is manliness, personal strength, a capacity for imposing oneself on others. The word also has another, more restricted meaning. When we say, “Vete a la chingada,” 2 we send a person to a distant place. Distant, vague and indeterminate. To the country of broken and worn-­out things. A gray country, immense and empty, that is not located anywhere. . . . The chingada, because of constant usage, contradictory meanings and the friction of angry or enthusiastic lips, wastes away, loses its contents and disappears. It is a hollow word. It says nothing. It is Nothingness itself. After this digression, it is possible to answer the question, “What is the Chingada?” The Chingada is the Mother forcibly opened, violated or deceived. The hijo de la Chingada is the offspring of violation, abduction or deceit. If we compare this expression with the Spanish hijo de puta (son of a whore), the difference is immediately obvious. To the Spaniard, dishonor consists in being the son of a woman who voluntarily surrenders herself: a prostitute. To the Mexican it consists in being the fruit of a violation. Manuel Cabrera points out that the Spanish attitude reflects a moral and historical conception of original sin, while that of the Mexican, deeper and more genuine, transcends both ethics and anecdotes. In effect, every

24  Octavio Paz

woman—­even when she gives herself willingly—­is torn open by the man, is the Chingada. In a certain sense all of us, by the simple fact of being born of woman, are hijos de la Chingada, sons of Eve. But the singularity of the Mexican resides, I believe, in his violent, sarcastic humiliation of the Mother and his no less violent affirmation of the Father. A woman friend of mine (women are more aware of the strangeness of this situation) has made me see that this admiration for the Father—­who is the symbol of the closed, the aggressive—­ expresses itself very clearly in a saying we use when we want to demonstrate our superiority: “I am your father.” . . . The macho represents the masculine pole of life. The phrase “I am your father” has no paternal flavor and it is not said in order to protect or to guide another, but rather to impose one’s superiority, that is, to humiliate. Its real meaning is no different from that of the verb chingar and its derivatives. The macho is the gran chingón. One word sums up the aggressiveness, insensitivity, invulnerability and other attributes of the macho: power. It is force without the discipline of any notion of order: arbitrary power, the will without reins and without a set course. . . . The essential attribute of the macho—­power—­a lmost always reveals itself as a capacity for wounding, humiliating, annihilating. Nothing is more natural, therefore, than his indifference toward the offspring he engenders. He is not the founder of a people; he is not a patriarch who exercises patria potestas; he is not a king or a judge or the chieftain of a clan. He is power isolated in its own potency, without relationship or compromise with the outside world. He is pure in communication, a solitude that devours itself and everything it touches. He does not pertain to our world; he is not from our city; he does not live in our neighborhood. He comes from far away: he is always far away. He is the Stranger. It is impossible not to notice the resemblance between the figure of the macho and that of the Spanish conquistador. This is the model—­ more mythical than real—­that determines the images the Mexican people form of men in power: caciques, feudal lords, hacienda owners, politicians, generals, captains of industry. They are all machos, chingones. The macho has no heroic or divine counterpart. Hidalgo, the “father of the fatherland” as it is customary to call him in the ritual gibberish of the Republic, is a defenseless old man, more an incarnation of the people’s helplessness against force than an image of the wrath and power of an awe-­i nspiring father. Among the numerous patron saints of the Mexicans there is none who resembles the great masculine divinities. Finally, there is no especial veneration for God the Father in the Trinity. He is a dim figure at best. On the other hand, there is profound devotion to Christ as the Son of God, as the youthful God, above all as the victimized Redeemer. The village churches have a great many images of Jesus—­on the cross, or covered with thorns and wounds—­i n which the insolent realism of the Spaniards is mingled with the

The Sons of La Malinche  25

tragic symbolism of the Indians. On the one hand, the wounds are flowers, pledges of resurrection; on the other, they are a reiteration that life is the sorrowful mask of death. . . . The Mexican venerates a bleeding and humiliated Christ, a Christ who has been beaten by the soldiers and condemned by the judges, because he sees in him a transfigured image of his own identity. . . . And this brings to mind Cuauhtémoc, the young Aztec emperor who was dethroned, tortured, and murdered by Cortés. Cuauhtémoc means “Falling Eagle.” The Mexican chieftain rose to power at the beginning of the siege of México-­Tenochtitlán, when the Aztecs had been abandoned by their gods, their vassals and their allies. Even his relationship with a woman fits the archetype of the young hero, at one and the same time the lover and the son of [a] goddess. . . . He is a warrior but he is also a child. The exception is that the heroic cycle does not end with his death: the fallen hero awaits resurrection. It is not surprising that for the majority of Mexicans Cuauhtémoc should be the “young grandfather,” the origin of Mexico: the hero’s tomb is the cradle of the people. This is the dialectic of myth, and Cuauhtémoc is more a myth than a historical figure. Another element enters here, an analogy that makes this history a true poem in search of fulfillment: the location of Cuauhtémoc’s tomb is not known. To discover it would mean nothing less than to return to our origins, to reunite ourselves with our ancestry, to break out of our solitude. It would be a resurrection. If we ask about the third figure of the triad, the Mother, we hear a double answer. It is no secret to anyone that Mexican Catholicism is centered about the cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe. In the first place, she is an Indian Virgin; in the second place, the scene of her appearance to the Indian Juan Diego was a hill that formerly contained a sanctuary dedicated to Tonantzin, “Our Mother,” the Aztec goddess of fertility. We know that the Conquest coincided with the apogee of the cult of two masculine divinities: Quetzalcóatl, the self-­sacrificing god, and Huitzilopochtli, the young warrior-­god. The defeat of these gods—­which is what the Conquest meant to the Indian world, because it was the end of a cosmic cycle and the inauguration of a new divine kingdom—­caused the faithful to return to the ancient feminine deities. This phenomenon of a return to the maternal womb, so well known to the psychologist, is without doubt one of the determining causes of the swift popularity of the cult of the Virgin. The Indian goddesses were goddesses of fecundity, linked to the cosmic rhythms, the vegetative processes and agrarian rites. The Catholic Virgin is also the Mother (some Indian pilgrims still call her Guadalupe-­Tonantzin), but her principal attribute is not to watch over the fertility of the earth but to provide refuge for the unfortunate. The situation has changed: the worshipers do not try to make sure of their harvests but to find a mother’s lap. The Virgin is the consolation of the poor, the shield of the weak, the help of the oppressed. In sum, she is 26  Octavio Paz

the Mother of orphans. All men are born disinherited and their true condition is orphanhood, but this is particularly true among the Indians and the poor in Mexico. The cult of the Virgin reflects not only the general condition of man but also a concrete historical situation, in both the spiritual and material realms. In addition, the Virgin—­the universal Mother—­is also the intermediary, the messenger, between disinherited man and the unknown, inscrutable power: the Strange. In contrast to Guadalupe, who is the Virgin Mother, the Chingada is the violated Mother. .  .  . Both of them are passive figures. Guadalupe is pure receptivity, and the benefits she bestows are of the same order: she consoles, quiets, dries tears, calms passions. The Chingada is even more passive. Her passivity is abject: she does not resist violence, but is an inert heap of bones, blood and dust. Her taint is constitutional and resides . . . in her sex. This passivity, open to the outside world, causes her to lose her identity: she is the Chingada. She loses her name; she is no one; she disappears into nothingness; she is Nothingness. And yet she is the cruel incarnation of the feminine condition. If the Chingada is a representation of the violated Mother, it is appropriate to associate her with the Conquest, which was also a violation, not only in the historical sense but also in the very flesh of Indian women. The symbol of this violation is Doña Malinche, the mistress of Cortés. It is true that she gave herself voluntarily to the conquistador, but he forgot her as soon as her usefulness was over. Doña Marina3 becomes a figure representing the Indian women who were fascinated, violated, or seduced by the Spaniards. And as a small boy will not forgive his mother if she abandons him to search for his father, the Mexican people have not forgiven La Malinche for her betrayal. She embodies the open, the chingado, to our closed, stoic, impassive Indians. Cuauhtémoc and Doña Marina are thus two antagonistic and complementary figures. There is nothing surprising about our cult of the young emperor—­“the only hero at the summit of art,” an image of the sacrificed son—­and there is also nothing surprising about the curse that weighs against La Malinche. This explains the success of the contemptuous adjective malinchista recently put into circulation by the newspapers to denounce all those who have been corrupted by foreign influences. The malinchistas are those who want Mexico to open itself to the outside world: the true sons of La Malinche, who is the Chingada in person. Once again we see the opposition of the closed and the open. When we shout “¡Viva México, hijos de la chingada!” we express our desire to live closed off from the outside world and, above all, from the past. In this shout we condemn our origins and deny our hybridism. The strange permanence of Cortés and La Malinche in the Mexican’s imagination and sensibilities reveals that they are something more than historical figures: they are symbols of a secret conflict that we have still not resolved. When he repudiates La Malinche—­the Mexican Eve, as she was represented by José The Sons of La Malinche  27

­ lemente Orozco in his mural in the National Preparatory School—­the MexC ican breaks his ties with the past, renounces his origins, and lives in isolation and solitude. The Mexican condemns all his traditions at once, the whole set of gestures, attitudes and tendencies in which it is now difficult to distinguish the Spanish from the Indian. For that reason the Hispanic thesis, which would have us descend from Cortés to the exclusion of La Malinche, is the patrimony of a few extremists who are not even pure whites. The same can be said of indigenist propaganda, which is also supported by fanatical criollos and mestizos, while the Indians have never paid it the slightest attention. The Mexican does not want to be either an Indian or a Spaniard. Nor does he want to be descended from them. He denies them. And he does not affirm himself as a mixture, but rather as an abstraction: he is a man. He becomes the son of Nothingness. His beginnings are in his own self. This attitude is revealed not only in our daily life but also in the course of our history, which at certain moments has been the embodiment of a will to eradicate all that has gone before. It is astonishing that a country with such a vivid past—­a country so profoundly traditional, so close to its roots, so rich in ancient legends even if poor in modern history—­should conceive of itself only as a negation of its origins. Our shout strips us naked and discloses the wound that we alternately flaunt and conceal, but it does not show us the causes of this separation from, and negation of, the Mother, not even when we recognize that such a rupture has occurred. In lieu of a closer examination of the problem, we will suggest that the liberal Reform movement of the middle of the last century seems to be the moment when the Mexican decided to break with his traditions, which is a form of breaking with oneself. If our Independence movement cut the ties that bound us to Spain, the Reform movement denied that the Mexican nation as a historical project should perpetuate the colonial tradition. Juárez and his generation founded a state whose ideals are distinct from those that animated New Spain or the pre-­Cortesian cultures. The Mexican state proclaimed an abstract and universal conception of man: the Republic is not composed of criollos, Indians, and mestizos (as the Laws of the Indies, with a great love for distinctions and a great respect for the heterogeneous nature of the colonial world, had specified) but simply of men alone. All alone. The Reform movement is the great rupture with the Mother. This separation was a necessary and inevitable act, because every life that is truly autonomous begins as a break with its family and its past. But the separation still hurts. We still suffer from that wound. That is why the feeling of orphanhood is the constant background of our political endeavors and our personal conflicts. Mexico is all alone, like each one of her sons.

28  Octavio Paz

Notes 1. La Llorona is the “Weeping Woman,” who wanders through the streets late at night, weeping and crying out. Trans. 2. Somewhat stronger than “Go to hell.” Trans. 3. The name given to La Malinche by the Spaniards. Trans.

The Sons of La Malinche  29

The Problem of National Culture Guillermo Bonfil Batalla

Like Octavio Paz, anthropologist Guillermo Bonfil Batalla (1935–91) believed that Mexico suffers from a crisis of identity. However, for Bonfil the nature of that crisis is quite different. For the earlier thinkers, the Indian remained a shadowy presence who constituted a “problem,” the only apparent solution to which was assimilation into the Westernized culture of the dominant, usually urban groups. By contrast, Bonfil Batalla argued that the true Mexico, which he labels “México profundo,” is represented by Indians, rural mestizos, and a portion of the urban poor, whose culture is Mesoamerican. The values of this culture are incompatible with those of the elite, who have consistently sought to imitate the culture of Western Europe and to deny the social realities of their own country. Far from an inert mass, Mexico’s Indians remain the bearers of a true, alternative civilization which needs to be reclaimed rather than denied or suppressed. Bonfil Batalla was among Mexico’s most distinguished anthropologists. He served as director of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (inah), founded and directed the National Museum of Popular Culture, and directed the Center for Research and Advanced Study in Social Anthropology (ciesas). In 1975 he helped to organize Mexico’s first National Congress of Indian Peoples, which reflected his conviction that Indian peoples would profit more from autonomy and self-­determination than from efforts, however well intentioned, at assimilation or social welfare. What explains the absence of a common Mexican culture is the presence of two civilizations that have never fused to produce a new civilizational program. Neither have they coexisted in harmony, to each other’s reciprocal benefit. To the contrary, the groups of Mesoamerican origin and the successive hegemonic groups dominant in Mexican society, with their versions of Western civilization, continue to be opposed. There has never been a process of convergence, but, rather, one of opposition. There is one simple and straightforward reason: certain social groups have illegitimately held political, economic, and ideological power from the European invasion to the present. All have been affiliated through inheritance or through circumstance with Western civilization, and within their programs for governing there has 30

been no place for Mesoamerican civilization. The dominant position of these groups originated in the stratified order of colonial society. It has expressed itself in an ideology that conceives of the future only in terms of development, progress, advancement, and the Revolution itself, all concepts within the mainstream of Western civilization. Cultural diversity and, specifically, the omnipresence of Mesoamerican civilization have always been interpreted within that scheme in the only way possible. They are seen as an obstacle to progress along the one true path and toward the only valid objective. The mentality inherited from the colonizers does not allow perception of or invention of any other path. Mesoamerican civilization is either dead or must die as soon as possible, because it is of undeniable inferiority and has no future of its own. The presence of two distinct civilizations implies the existence of different historical plans for the future. We are not dealing simply with alternatives within the framework of a common civilization, proposals that might alter current reality in many ways but that do not question the ultimate objectives or the underlying values that all share as participants in the same civilizational project. We are, rather, dealing with different projects, which are built on different ways of conceiving of the world, nature, society, and humankind. They postulate different hierarchies of values. They do not have the same aspirations nor do they understand in the same way how the full realization of each human being is to be achieved. They are projects that express two unique concepts of transcendence. Throughout, attempts at cultural unification have never suggested unity through creation of a new civilization that would be the synthesis of the existing ones. Rather, unity has been attempted through the elimination of one (Mesoamerican civilization, of course) and the spread of the other. The colonial enterprise engaged in destroying Mesoamerican civilization and stopped only where self-­i nterest intervened. When necessary, whole peoples were destroyed. On the other hand, where the labor force of the Indians was required, they were kept socially and culturally segregated. Indirectly and in a contradictory fashion, the minimum conditions for the continuity of Mesoamerican civilization were created, in spite of the brutal decline in population during the first decades after the invasion. This decline was one of the most violent and terrible demographic catastrophes in the history of humanity. Its intrinsic nature prevented the colonial regime from posing a project of cultural fusion that might have amalgamated the Mesoamerican and the Western civilizational planes. The ideology that justified colonization was that of a redemptive crusade, thus revealing the conviction that the only path to salvation was that of Western civilization. The Westernization of the Indian, nevertheless, turned out to be contradictory, given the stubborn necessity of maintaining a clear distinction between the colonizers and the colonized. If the Indians had stopped being The Problem of National Culture  31

Indians in order to be fully incorporated into Western civilization, the ideological justification for colonial domination would have ended. Segregation and difference are essential for any colonial society. Unification, on the other hand, whether by assimilation of the colonized to the dominant culture or through the perhaps improbable fusion of two civilizations, denies the root of the colonial order. The birth and consolidation of Mexico as an independent state in the turbulent course of the nineteenth century did not produce any different plan, nothing that deviated from the basic intention of taking the country along the paths of Western civilization. The struggles between the liberals and the conservatives reflect different conceptions of how to achieve that goal, but those struggles never question it. The new nation was conceived as culturally homogeneous, following the dominant European conviction that a state is the expression of a people with a common culture and the same language and is produced by having a common history. Thus, consolidating the nation was the goal of all groups contending for power. They understood consolidation as the slow incorporation of the great majority to the cultural model that had been adopted as the national plan. The ruling groups of the country, who make or impose the most important decisions affecting all of Mexican society, have never admitted that to advance might imply liberating and encouraging the cultural capacities that really exist in the majority of the population. .  .  . In this way of thinking about things, the majority of Mexicans have a future only on the condition that they stop being themselves. That change is conceived as a definite break, a transformation into someone else. It is never conceived as bringing up to date through internal transformation, as liberating cultures that have been subject to multiple pressures during five centuries of colonial domination. The constitutional history of Mexico is an example that illustrates this schizophrenic posture in a striking way. In all cases it has led to the juridical construction of a fictitious state from whose norms and practices the majority of the population is excluded. .  .  . We must admit [that it is] a great dominating fiction. Otherwise, how do we explain a system of democratic elections based on the recognition of political parties as the only legitimate vehicles for electoral participation in a country in which an absolute majority of the population does not belong to any party or exercise its right to vote? One would look in vain for a single example demonstrating an intention to understand and recognize the real systems that various groups use to obtain and legitimize authority. One would look in vain for an attempt to structure a national system in which local political forms would have a place and in which, at the same time, they might encounter the stimulus and the possibilities for progressive development. There are no such examples. The country must be modern right now, made so by virtue of law, and if reality follows other paths, it is an incorrect and illegal reality. 32  Guillermo Bonfil Batalla

This schizophrenic fiction, manifest in all aspects of the country’s life and culture, has grave consequences, which do not seem to worry the proponents of the imaginary Mexico. In the first place, the fiction produces the marginalization of the majority, a marginalization that is real and not imaginary. . . . This is not . . . a marginalization that is expressed only in reduced access to goods and services, but, rather, a total marginalization, an exclusion from one’s own way of living. Many Mexicans thus have a choice: they can live on the margin of national life, related to it only by the minimal, inevitable relations between their real world and the other, which appears as different and external; or they can live a double life, also schizophrenic, changing between worlds and cultures according to circumstances and necessities; or, finally, they can renounce their identity from birth and try to be fully accepted in the imaginary Mexico of the minority. The notion of democracy was established two centuries ago as one of the central aspirations of Western civilization. However, upon being mechanically transplanted into a postulate of the imaginary Mexico, it converted itself into a series of mechanisms of exclusion, whose effect was to deny the existence of the population. It is a curious democracy that does not recognize the existence of the people themselves, but, rather, sets itself the task of creating them. Afterward, it would, of course, put itself at their service. It is a surprising democracy of the minority, a national program that begins by leaving out the majority groups of the country. It is a project that ends by making illegitimate the thoughts and actions of the majority of Mexicans; the people themselves wind up being the obstacle to democracy. A second consequence is also inevitable. By making reality a blank page, one chooses not to make use of the greater part of the cultural capital of Mexican society. It becomes an absolute impossibility to recognize, appreciate, and stimulate the development of the extensive and varied cultural patrimony that history has placed in Mexican hands. The old colonial blindness remains, the notion that here there is nothing with which a future can be built. If the people have to be created to substitute for the nonpeople who exist, it follows that a culture also has to be created to substitute for the existing nonculture. The elements that ought to constitute the core of the new culture are not here, and they are important: ideas, knowledge, aspirations, technology, what to do and how to do it. Once more we find the dishonest task of substituting for reality instead of transforming it.

The Problem of National Culture  33

How to Tame a Wild Tongue Gloria Anzaldúa

The classic writings on “lo mexicano” have been criticized in recent years for their tendency to generalize about what is unarguably a vast number of people. Relatively few of those people, we might surmise, conform to the image of the eternal adolescent or the wounded angry macho described by the likes of Octavio Paz. Nor may it be helpful, beyond a certain point, to generalize, in rather dichotomous fashion, as Bonfil Batalla does, about the existence of two Mexicos inhabited by circumscribed dominant and subordinate groups. Some have suggested that these pensadores (grand thinkers), whatever their motives, have only created and perpetuated stereotypes of the Mexican that have been manipulated for political ends. For example, cultural critics like Carlos Monsiváis and Roger Bartra have suggested that stereotypes like the solitary macho or the poor urban pelado, most famously portrayed in the Mexican cinema by the beloved comedic everyman Mario Moreno, better known as Cantinflas (1911–93), more often than not were harnessed to serve the interests of Mexico’s powerful pri regime. It was in the “Official Party’s” interest, after all, as the custodian of mass culture in the decades following the Mexican revolution, to perpetuate unifying consensual images of national identity and character. But the cultural-­political construct of mexicanidad could also be shaped, negotiated, and appropriated by other actors and interests who resisted the projects of entrenched states, elite establishments, and the patriarchal order. Moreover, notions of lo mexicano also resonated beyond the nation’s physical boundaries, in the diverse cultural spaces of a Greater Mexico. In the selection that follows, Gloria Anzaldúa, a foundational Mexican American poet and Chicana feminist theorist (1942–2004), compellingly reflects on her own understanding of mexicanidad, which she developed throughout her life in the U.S.-­Mexican borderlands of South Texas and California. For Anzaldúa, Mexican-­ness was far from unitary identity and was rooted not in citizenship but in race and ancestral culture. Her mexicanidad had multiple manifestations and expressions, including food, popular music, the persistence of memory, and not least, language. In her most famous work, Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Meztiza, from which this selection is taken, Anzaldúa fleshes out her signature concept of “Nepantlism.” She derived the term from the Nahuatl word Nepantla, meaning “in the middle,” to capture her experience as a Chicana woman. As a Nepantliera, she regarded herself to be biologically, culturally, linguis34

tically, and spiritually mestiza—­a threshold person who chose to move within and among multiple, often conflicting worlds, while refusing to align herself exclusively with any single group, identity, or belief system. At the end of her essay, after detailing the shame and humiliation that Mexican borderlanders have been obliged to bear across centuries of discrimination and subordination, she ruminates on her multiple identities: “When not copping out, when we know we are more than nothing, we call ourselves Mexican, referring to race and ancestry; mestizo when affirming both our Indian and Spanish (but we hardly ever own our Black ancestry); Chicano when referring to a politically aware people born and/or raised in the U.S.; Raza when referring to Chicanos; Tejanos when we are Chicanos from Texas.” “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” represents a critical second-­generation contribution to the Chicano political and cultural movement. It appeared roughly two decades after Cesar Chavez and the farmworkers united in California, the Raza Unida Party was formed in Texas, and Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales’s movement-­galvanizing epic poem was published.1 It provides another, transborder lens for understanding the meaning of “lo mexicano”—one that allows us to consider the role that language has both in maintaining forms of political, cultural, and sexual domination and in resisting them. For Anzaldúa and many fronterizos, language is a battleground and arena for empowerment and rights-­claiming: until they can take pride in the “several languages” they speak, they cannot take pride in themselves. For Anzaldúa, the threat is an existential one: she will “no longer be made to feel ashamed of existing.” “I will have my voice,” she asserts, and this includes “my women’s voice, my sexual voice, my poet’s voice. I will overcome the tradition of silence.” As we will see in this volume’s penultimate section, “The Border and Beyond,” these struggles over identity, language, and gender continue today, more than three decades later. Yet for eleven million undocumented workers and their families, including the hundreds of thousands of “Dreamers,” the children who were brought to this country, language is not as existential a threat to their identity as the fear of removal by what they have described in the 2010s as a powerful “deportation machine,” employed by Democratic as well as Republican administrations. While the majority of these undocumented migrants are Mexicans, the product of the last great wave of Mexican migration that peaked in the decades from 2000 to 2020, their numbers have been greatly augmented in recent years by Central Americans and South Americans. For many Mexicans in this new generation of Dreamers and undocumented young people, language is not a critical battleground, nor even a major component of their mexicanidad. Indeed, for many, their ongoing claim to permanent status and citizenship is predicated on having grown up embracing an “American” identity, with English as their first and often only language. “We’re going to have to control your tongue,” the dentist says, pulling out all the metal from my mouth. Silver bits plop and tinkle into the basin. My mouth is a motherlode. . . . “We’re going to have to do something about your tongue,” I hear the anHow to Tame a Wild Tongue  35

ger rising in his voice. My tongue keeps pushing out the wads of cotton, pushing back the drills, the long thin needles. “I’ve never seen anything as strong or as stubborn,” he says. And I think, how do you tame a wild tongue, train it to be quiet, how do you bridle and saddle it? How do you make it lie down? Who is to say that robbing a people of its language is less violent than war? —­Ray Gwyn Smith 2

I remember being caught speaking Spanish at recess—­that was good for three licks on the knuckles with a sharp ruler. I remember being sent to the corner of the classroom for “talking back” to the Anglo teacher when all I was trying to do was tell her how to pronounce my name. “If you want to be American, speak ‘American.’ If you don’t like it, go back to Mexico where you belong.” “I want you to speak English. Pa’ hallar buen trabajo tienes que saber hablar el inglés bien. Qué vale toda tu educación si todavía hablas inglés con un ‘accent,’ ” my mother would say, mortified that I spoke English like a Mexican. At Pan American University, I and all Chicano students were required to take two speech classes. Their purpose: to get rid of our accents. Attacks on one’s form of expression with the intent to censor are a violation of the First Amendment. El Anglo con cara de inocente nos arrancó la lengua. Wild tongues can’t be tamed, they can only be cut out.

Overcoming the Tradition of Silence En boca cerrada no entran moscas. “Flies don’t enter a closed mouth” is a saying I kept hearing when I was a child. Ser habladora was to be a gossip and a liar, to talk too much. Muchachitas bien criadas, well-­bred girls don’t answer back. Es una falta de respeto to talk back to one’s mother or father. I remember one of the sins I’d recite to the priest in the confession box the few times I went to confession: talking back to my mother, . . . having a big mouth, questioning, carrying tales are all signs of being mal criada. In my culture they are all words that are derogatory if applied to women—­I’ve never heard them applied to men. The first time I heard two women, a Puerto Rican and a Cuban, say the word nosotras, I was shocked. I had not known the word existed. Chicanas use nosotros whether we’re male or female. We are robbed of our female being by the masculine plural. Language is a male discourse. . . . Even our own people, other Spanish speakers nos quieren poner candados en la boca. They would hold us back with their bag of reglas de academia.

36  Gloria Anzaldúa

Oye como ladra: El lenguaje de la frontera Quien tiene boca se equivoca. —­Mexican saying

“Pocho, cultural traitor, you’re speaking the oppressor’s language by speaking English, you’re ruining the Spanish language,” I have been accused by various Latinos and Latinas. Chicano Spanish is considered by the purist and by most Latinos deficient, a mutilation of Spanish. But Chicano Spanish is a border tongue which developed naturally. Change, evolución, enriquecimiento de palabras nuevas por invención o adopción have created variants of Chicano Spanish, un nuevo lenguaje. Un lenguaje que corresponde a un modo de vivir. Chicano Spanish is not incorrect, it is a living language. For a people who are neither Spanish nor live in a country in which Spanish is the first language; for a people who live in a country in which English is the reigning tongue but who are not Anglo; for a people who cannot entirely identify with either standard (formal, Castillian) Spanish nor standard English, what recourse is left to them but to create their own language? A language which they can connect their identity to, one capable of communicating the realities and values true to themselves—­a language with terms that are neither español ni inglés, but both. We speak a patois, a forked tongue, a variation of two languages. Chicano Spanish sprang out of the Chicanos’ need to identify ourselves as a distinct people. We needed a language with which we could communicate with ourselves, a secret language. For some of us, language is a homeland closer than the Southwest—­for many Chicanos today live in the Midwest and the East. And because we are a complex, heterogeneous people, we speak many languages. Some of the languages we speak are: 1. Standard English 2. Working-­class and slang English 3. Standard Spanish 4. Standard Mexican Spanish 5. North Mexican Spanish dialect 6. Chicano Spanish (Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California have regional variations) 7. Tex-­Mex 8. Pachuco (called caló) My “home” tongues are the languages I speak with my sister and brothers, with my friends. They are the last five listed, with 6 and 7 being closest to my heart. From school, the media and job situations, I’ve picked up standard and working-­class English. From Mamagrande Locha and from reading Spanish and Mexican literature, I’ve picked up Standard Spanish and Standard Mexican Spanish. From los recién llegados, Mexican immigrants, and braceros, How to Tame a Wild Tongue  37

I learned the North Mexican dialect. With Mexicans I’ll try to speak either Standard Mexican Spanish or the North Mexican dialect. From my parents and Chicanos living in the Valley, I picked up Chicano Texas Spanish, and I speak it with my mom, younger brother (who married a Mexican and who rarely mixes Spanish with English), aunts, and older relatives. With Chicanas from Nuevo México or Arizona I will speak Chicano Spanish a little, but often they don’t understand what I’m saying. With most California Chicanas I speak entirely in English (unless I forget). When I first moved to San Francisco, I’d rattle off something in Spanish, unintentionally embarrassing them. Often it is only with another Chicana tejana that I can talk freely. Words distorted by English are known as anglicisms or pochismos. The pocho is an anglicized Mexican or American of Mexican origin who speaks Spanish with an accent characteristic of North Americans and who distorts and reconstructs the language according to the influence of English.3 Tex-­ Mex, or Spanglish, comes most naturally to me. I may switch back and forth from English to Spanish in the same sentence or in the same word. With my sister and my brother Nune and with Chicano tejano contemporaries I speak in Tex-­Mex. From kids and people my own age I picked up Pachuco. Pachuco (the language of the zoot suiters) is a language of rebellion, both against Standard Spanish and Standard English. It is a secret language. Adults of the culture and outsiders cannot understand it. It is made up of slang words from both English and Spanish. Ruca means girl or woman, vato means guy or dude, chale means no, simón means yes, churro is sure, talk is periquiar, pigionear means petting, qué gacho means how nerdy, ponte águila means watch out, death is called la pelona. Through lack of practice and not having others who can speak it, I’ve lost most of the Pachuco tongue.

Chicano Spanish Chicanos, after 250 years of Spanish/Anglo colonization, have developed significant differences in the Spanish we speak. . . . We use anglicisms, words borrowed from English: bola from ball, carpeta from carpet, máchina de lavar (instead of lavadora) from washing machine. Tex-­Mex argot, created by adding a Spanish sound at the beginning or end of an English word such as cookiar for cook, watchar for watch, parkiar for park, and rapiar for rape, is the result of the pressures on Spanish speakers to adapt to English. We don’t use the word vosotros/as or its accompanying verb form. We don’t say claro (to mean yes), imagínate, or me emociona, unless we picked up Spanish from Latinas [i.e., Latin Americans], out of a book, or in a classroom. Other Spanish-­speaking groups are going through the same, or similar, development in their Spanish. 38  Gloria Anzaldúa

Linguistic Terrorism Deslenguadas. Somos los del espanol deficiente. We are your linguistic nightmare, your linguistic aberration, your linguistic mestisaje, the subject of your burla. Because we speak with tongues of fire we are culturally crucified. Racially, culturally and linguistically somos ­huérfanos—­we speak an orphan tongue.

Chicanas who grew up speaking Chicano Spanish have internalized the belief that we speak poor Spanish. It is illegitimate, a bastard language. And because we internalize how our language has been used against us by the dominant culture, we use our language differences against each other. Chicana feminists often skirt around each other with suspicion and hesitation. For the longest time I couldn’t figure it out. Then it dawned on me. To be close to another Chicana is like looking into the mirror. We are afraid of what we’ll see there. Pena. Shame. Low estimation of self. In childhood we are told that our language is wrong. Repeated attacks on our native tongue diminish our sense of self. The attacks continue throughout our lives. Chicanas feel uncomfortable talking in Spanish to Latinas [Latin Americans], afraid of their censure. Their language was not outlawed in their countries. They had a whole lifetime of being immersed in their native tongue; generations, centuries in which Spanish was a first language, taught in school, heard on radio and TV, and read in the newspaper. If a person, Chicana or Latina, has a low estimation of my native tongue, she also has a low estimation of me. Often with mexicanas y latinas we’ll speak English as a neutral language. Even among Chicanas we tend to speak English at parties or conferences. Yet, at the same time, we’re afraid the other will think we’re agringadas because we don’t speak Chicano Spanish. We oppress each other trying to out-­Chicano each other, vying to be the “real” Chicanas, to speak like Chicanos. There is no one Chicano language just as there is no one Chicano experience. A monolingual Chicana whose first language is English or Spanish is just as much a Chicana as one who speaks several variants of Spanish. A Chicana from Michigan or Chicago or Detroit is just as much a Chicana as one from the Southwest. Chicano Spanish is as diverse linguistically as it is regionally. By the end of this century, Spanish speakers will comprise the biggest minority group in the U.S., a country where students in high schools and colleges are encouraged to take French classes because French is considered more “cultured.” But for a language to remain alive it must be used.4 By the end of this century English, and not Spanish, will be the mother tongue of most Chicanos and Latinos. So, if you want to really hurt me, talk badly about my language. Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity—­I am my language. Until I can take pride in my language, I cannot take pride in myself. Until I can accept as legitimate Chicano Texas Spanish, Tex-­Mex, and all the other languages I How to Tame a Wild Tongue  39

speak, I cannot accept the legitimacy of myself. Until I am free to write bilingually and to switch codes without having always to translate, while I still have to speak English or Spanish when I would rather speak Spanglish, and as long as I have to accommodate the English speakers rather than having them accommodate me, my tongue will be illegitimate. I will no longer be made to feel ashamed of existing. I will have my voice: Indian, Spanish, white. I will have my serpent’s tongue—­my woman’s voice, my sexual voice, my poet’s voice. I will overcome the tradition of silence. . . .

“Vistas,” corridos, y comida: My Native Tongue In the 1960s, I read my first Chicano novel. It was City of Night by John Rechy, a gay Texan, son of a Scottish father and a Mexican mother. For days I walked around in stunned amazement that a Chicano could write and could get published. When I read I Am Joaquín5 I was surprised to see a bilingual book by a Chicano in print. When I saw poetry written in Tex-­Mex for the first time, a feeling of pure joy flashed through me. I felt like we really existed as a people. In 1971, when I started teaching high school English to Chicano students, I tried to supplement the required texts with works by Chicanos, only to be reprimanded and forbidden to do so by the principal. He claimed that I was supposed to teach “American” and English literature. At the risk of being fired, I swore my students to secrecy and slipped in Chicano short stories, poems, a play. In graduate school, while working toward a PhD, I had to “argue” with one advisor after the other, semester after semester, before I was allowed to make Chicano literature an area of focus. Even before I read books by Chicanos or Mexicans, it was the Mexican movies I saw at the drive-­in—­the Thursday night special of $1.00 a carload—­ that gave me a sense of belonging. “Vamonos a las vistas,” my mother would call out and we’d all—­g randmother, brothers, sister, and cousins—­squeeze into the car. We’d wolf down cheese-­a nd-­bologna white bread sandwiches while watching Pedro Infante in melodramatic tear-­jerkers like Nosotros los pobres, the first “real” Mexican movie (that was not an imitation of European movies). I remember seeing Cuando los hijos se van and surmising that all Mexican movies played up the love a mother has for her children and what ungrateful sons and daughters suffer when they are not devoted to their mothers. I remember the singing-­type “westerns” of Jorge Negrete and Miquel Aceves Mejía. When watching Mexican movies, I felt a sense of homecoming as well as alienation. People who were to amount to something didn’t go to Mexican movies, or bailes or tune their radios to bolero, rancherita, and corrido music. The whole time I was growing up, there was norteño music sometimes called North Mexican border music, or Tex-­Mex music, or Chicano music,

40  Gloria Anzaldúa

or cantina (bar) music. I grew up listening to conjuntos, three-­  or four-­piece bands made up of folk musicians playing guitar, bajo sexto, drums, and button accordion, which Chicanos had borrowed from the German immigrants who had come to central Texas and Mexico to farm and build breweries. In the Rio Grande Valley, Steve Jordan and Little Joe Hernandez were popular, and Flaco Jimenez was the accordion king. The rhythms of Tex-­Mex music are those of the polka, also adapted from the Germans, who in turn had borrowed the polka from the Czechs and Bohemians. I remember the hot, sultry evenings when corridos—­songs of love and death on the Texas-­Mexican borderlands—­reverberated out of cheap amplifiers from the local cantinas and wafted in through my bedroom window. Corridos first became widely used along the South Texas / Mexican border during the early conflict between Chicanos and Anglos. The corridos are usually about Mexican heroes who do valiant deeds against the Anglo oppressors. Pancho Villa’s song, “La cucaracha,” is the most famous one. Corridos of John F. Kennedy and his death are still very popular in the Valley. Older Chicanos remember Lydia Mendoza, one of the great border corrido singers who was called la Gloria de Tejas. Her “El tango negro,” sung during the Great Depression, made her a singer of the people. The ever-­present corridos narrated one hundred years of border history, bringing news of events as well as entertaining. These folk musicians and folk songs are our chief cultural myth-­makers, and they made our hard lives seem bearable. I grew up feeling ambivalent about our music. Country-­western and rock-­ and-­roll had more status. In the ’50s and ’60s, for the slightly educated and agringado Chicanos, there existed a sense of shame at being caught listening to our music. Yet I couldn’t stop my feet from thumping to the music, could not stop humming the words, nor hide from myself the exhilaration I felt when I heard it. There are more subtle ways that we internalize identification, especially in the forms of images and emotions. For me food and certain smells are tied to my identity, to my homeland. Woodsmoke curling up to an immense blue sky; woodsmoke perfuming my grandmother’s clothes, her skin. The stench of cow manure and the yellow patches on the ground; the crack of a .22 rifle and the reek of cordite. Homemade white cheese sizzling in a pan, melting inside a folded tortilla. My sister Hilda’s hot, spicy menudo, chile colorado making it deep red, pieces of panza and hominy floating on top. My brother Carito barbequing fajitas in the backyard. Even now and three thousand miles away, I can see my mother spicing the ground beef, pork, and venison with chile. My mouth salivates at the thought of the hot steaming tamales I would be eating if I were home.

How to Tame a Wild Tongue  41

Si le preguntas a mi mamá, “¿Qué eres?” Nosotros los Chicanos straddle the borderlands. On one side of us, we are constantly exposed to the Spanish of the Mexicans, on the other side we hear the Anglos’ incessant clamoring so that we forget our language. Among ourselves we don’t say nosotros los americanos, o nosotros los españoles, o nosotros los hispanos. We say nosotros los mexicanos (by mexicanos we do not mean citizens of Mexico; we do not mean a national identity, but a racial one). We distinguish between mexicanos del otro lado and mexicanos de este lado. Deep in our hearts we believe that being Mexican has nothing to do with which country one lives in. Being Mexican is a state of soul—­not one of mind, not one of citizenship. Neither eagle nor serpent, but both. And like the ocean, neither animal respects borders. Dime con quien andas y te diré quien eres. (Tell me who your friends are and I’ll tell you who you are.) —­Mexican saying

Si le preguntas a mi mamá, “¿Qué eres?” te dirá, “Soy mexicana.” My brothers and sister say the same. I sometimes will answer “Soy mexicana” and at others will say “soy Chicana” o “Soy tejana.” But I identified as “Raza” before I ever identified as “mexicana” or “Chicana.” As a culture, we call ourselves Spanish when referring to ourselves as a linguistic group and when copping out. It is then that we forget our predominant Indian genes. We are 70–80 percent Indian.6 We call ourselves Hispanic7 or Spanish American or Latin American or Latin when linking ourselves to other Spanish-­speaking peoples of the Western hemisphere and when copping out. We call ourselves Mexican-­A merican8 to signify we are neither Mexican nor American, but more the noun American than the adjective Mexican (and when copping out). Chicanos and other people of color suffer economically for not acculturating. This voluntary (yet forced) alienation makes for psychological conflict, a kind of dual identity—­we don’t identify with the Anglo-­A merican cultural values and we don’t totally identify with the Mexican cultural values. We are a synergy of two cultures with various degrees of Mexicanness or Angloness. I have so internalized the borderland conflict that sometimes I feel like one cancels out the other and we are zero, nothing, no one. A veces no soy nada ni nadie. Pero hasta cuando no lo soy, lo soy. When not copping out, when we know we are more than nothing, we call ourselves Mexican, referring to race and ancestry; mestizo when affirming both our Indian and Spanish (but we hardly ever own our Black ancestry); Chicano when referring to a politically aware people born and/or raised in

42  Gloria Anzaldúa

the U.S.; Raza when referring to Chicanos; tejanos when we are Chicanos from Texas. Chicanos did not know we were a people until 1965 when Cesar Chavez and the farmworkers united and I Am Joaquín was published and la Raza Unida party was formed in Texas. With that recognition, we became a distinct people. Something momentous happened to the Chicano soul—­we became aware of our reality and acquired a name and a language (Chicano Spanish) that reflected that reality. Now that we had a name, some of the fragmented pieces began to fall together—­who we were, what we were, how we had evolved. We began to get glimpses of what we might eventually become. Yet the struggle of identities continues, the struggle of borders is our reality still. One day the inner struggle will cease and a true integration take place. In the meantime, tenemos que hacer la lucha. ¿Quién está protegiendo los ranchos de mi gente? ¿Quién está tratando de cerrar la fisura entre la india y el blanco en nuestra sangre? El Chicano, si, el Chicano que anda como un ladrón en su propia casa. Los Chicanos, how patient we seem, how very patient. There is the quiet of the Indian about us.9 We know how to survive. When other races have given up their tongue, we’ve kept ours. We know what it is to live under the hammer blow of the dominant norteamericano culture. But more than we count the blows, we count the days the weeks the years the centuries the eons until the white laws and commerce and customs will rot in the deserts they’ve created, lie bleached. Humildes yet proud, quietos yet wild, nosotros los mexicanos-­Chicanos will walk by the crumbling ashes as we go about our business. Stubborn, persevering, impenetrable as stone, yet possessing a malleability that renders us unbreakable, we, the mestizas and mestizos, will remain. Notes 1. González’s 1965 poem, which Anzaldúa affectionately acknowledges as an important influence in the shaping of Chicano identity, invokes the sweep of Mexican American history from mythical Aztec beginnings through the intense social struggles of the mid-­twentieth century. 2. Ray Gwyn Smith, Moorland Is Cold Country, unpublished manuscript. 3. R. C. Ortega, Dialectología del barrio, trans. Hortencia S. Alwan (Los Angeles: R. C. Ortega Publisher & Bookseller, 1977), 132. 4. Irena Klepfisz, “Secular Jewish Identity: Yidishkayt in America,” in The Tribe of Dina: A Jewish Women’s Anthology, ed. Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz and Irena Klepfisz (Montpelier, VT: Sinister Wisdom Books, 1986), 43. 5. Rodolfo Gonzales, I Am Joaquín / Yo Soy Joaquín (New York: Bantam Books, 1972). It was first published in 1967. 6. John R. Chávez, The Lost Land: The Chicano Images of the Southwest (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984), 88–90.

How to Tame a Wild Tongue  43

7. Hispanic is derived from Hispanis (España, a name given to the Iberian Peninsula in ancient times when it was a part of the Roman Empire) and is a term designated by the U.S. government to make it easier to handle us on paper. 8. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo created the Mexican American in 1848. 9. Anglos, in order to alleviate their guilt for dispossessing the Chicano, stressed the Spanish part of us and perpetrated the myth of the Spanish Southwest. We have accepted the fiction that we are Hispanic, that is Spanish, in order to accommodate ourselves to the dominant culture and its abhorrence of Indians. Chávez, Lost Land, 88–91.

44  Gloria Anzaldúa

Mexico City 1992 Alma Guillermoprieto

Journalist Alma Guillermoprieto, one of the most insightful chroniclers of contemporary Latin America, contributed the following “letter” to the New Yorker at a time when the government of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari—­a Harvard-­educated technocrat who packed his government with individuals of similar backgrounds and outlooks to his own—­was feverishly promoting the North American Free Trade Agreement. The relentless pursuit of North American–style modernity, however, was a double-­edged sword: many Mexicans not only doubted that nafta would bring the many blessings it promised, but also feared it would impoverish Mexico’s rich and unique culture. In the following excerpt from Guillermoprieto’s letter, the centerpiece is one of the touchstones of Mexico’s popular culture, the ranchera song. Mexicans know that a party has been outstandingly successful if at the end of it there are at least a couple of clusters of longtime or first-­time acquaintances leaning on each other against a wall, sobbing helplessly. The activities one normally associates with a party—­fl irting and conversation, and even the kind of dancing that leads to an amnesiac dawn in a strange bed—­are considered here mere preludes to or distractions from the ultimate goal, which is weeping and the free, luxurious expression of pain. A true celebrant of the Mexican fiesta will typically progress along a path that leads from compulsive joke-­telling to stubborn argumentativeness to thick-­tongued foolery, all in pursuit of a final, unchecked, absolving wash of tears, and a casual observer of this voluptuous ritual might conclude that the essential Mexican fin de fiesta cannot happen without alcohol. Not so. It cannot happen without ranchera music. People may cry admirably with little help from booze, but a drunk who begins to whimper without the benefit of song produces only mediocre tears. He cries out of self-­pity. The man or woman who, with a few tequilas packed away, bursts into tears to the strains of a ranchera hymn—­“Let My Bed Be Made of Stone,” for example—­weeps for the tragedy of the world, for a mother, for a father, for our doomed quests for happiness and love, for life. Sorrow on such a magnificent scale is in itself redeeming, and—­a n added benefit—­its glory leaves little room for embarrassment the morning after. Now that Mexico is carpeted with Kentucky Fried Chicken, Denny’s, and 45

McDonald’s outlets, and Coca-­Cola is the national drink; now that even low-­ paid office workers are indentured to their credit cards and auto loans; now that the government of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari has approved a North American Free Trade Agreement, which promises to make Mexico commercially one with its neighbors to the north, there is little scope for magnificent sorrow in the average citizen’s life. In the smog-­darkened center of Mexico City, or in its monstrous, ticky-­tacky suburban spokes, the average citizen on an average day is more concerned with beating the traffic, making the mortgage payment, punching the clock. Progress has hit Mexico in the form of devastation, some of it ecological, much of it aesthetic. Life is rushed, the water may be poisoned, and the new industrial tortillas taste terrible. Favorite ornaments for the home include porcelain dogs and plastic roses, and for the two-­thirds of the population which is confined to the cities recreation usually takes the form of a couple of hours with the latest imported sitcom or the local telenovelas. Hardly anyone knows anymore what it is to live on a ranch or to die of passion, and yet, when it comes to the defining moments of mexicanidad, ranchera music, with its odes to love, idyllic landscapes, and death for the sake of honor, continues to reign supreme. It is a hybrid music. Sung most often to the accompaniment of a mariachi ensemble, rancheras generate tension by setting the classic formality of the trumpets and violins against the howling quality of the vocals. The lyrics of many of the best-­k nown songs—­“Cielito Lindo,” say—­include verses that were inherited in colonial days from Spain. Many of the rhetorical flourishes—­“ lips like rose petals,” “eyes like stars”—­are Spanish also. But when rancheras turn, as they do obsessively, to the topics of death and destruction, alcohol and defeat, and the singer holds up his dying heart for all to see, or calls for the stones in the field to shout at him, he is bleeding from a wound that is uniquely Mexican. The spiritual home of ranchera music is in the heart of Mexico City—­in a raucous plaza surrounded by ratty night clubs and forbidding ancient churches. The plaza, which is not far from where I grew up, is named after Giuseppe Garibaldi, the nineteenth-­century Italian revolutionary, but the central statue is of José Alfredo Jiménez (1926–73), who wrote more songs about weeping, alcohol, and women than any other ranchera composer. José Alfredo’s statue is wearing mariachi costume, because that is what he wore when he sang, and because the plaza is home to dozens, if not hundreds, of men who are themselves mariachis, and who stroll the plaza at all hours of the day and night, singing José Alfredo’s songs and those of other ranchera composers to anyone who pays to listen. On three of the plaza’s irregular sides are vast cantinas and a food market, where vats of highly seasoned soup are sold throughout the night to ward off or cure hangovers. At the plaza’s dissonant center is a constantly moving

46  Alma Guillermoprieto

Henri Cartier-­Bresson, photograph of man with a violin, Los Remedios, near Mexico City, 1963. © Foundation Henri Cartier-­Bresson / Magnum. PhotosTEST 02-­Stock (Estate). Used by permission of Magnum Photos.

swarm of blurry-­eyed revellers and costumed mariachis. The people in mufti stroll, wail at the moon, stagger into each other’s arms, or gather around a group of musicians and sing along with them, striking defiant poses as they belt out the words. The mariachis tag after potential customers and negotiate prices, play checkers with bottle tops, shiver in the midnight cold, and, thirty or forty times an evening, play their hearts out for the revellers. Here and there, an electric-­shock vender wanders through the crowd, offering a brightly painted box of programmable current to those who, for the equivalent of a couple of dollars, want to take hold of a pair of wires and test their endurance of electricity. A gaggle of tall, goofy-­looking foreigners applauds and smiles at the mariachis who have just finished playing for them, and the mariachis smile, too, because tourists pay well. The people from Stand P-­84, a wholesale outlet for guavas and mangoes in the city’s gigantic central produce market, think the tourists are pretty funny. Chuy Soto and his guava-­selling colleagues arrived here around eight ­o’clock on this particular drizzly evening, and now, five hours later, they have reached the euphoric, sputtering stage at which the spirit invariably moves a Mexican to reach for extravagant metaphors and sing the glories of his country. There is a little pile of plastic glasses and empty bottles to mark the site where Chuy’s group has been standing all this time, and the singer for the mariachi ensemble that has been accompanying them has just about lost his

Mexico City 1992  47

voice, but Chuy and his friends are full of vigor. “We come here to sing, and after a while emotions come out of us, and Mexicanness,” Chuy says, blinking and pursing his lips as he struggles to focus. An adolescent tugs at my elbow, teary-­eyed and anxious to share his own thoughts, but he can’t get out a single coherent phrase, and he vanishes. One of Chuy’s warehouse partners is trying to dance with a plump young woman whose acquaintance he has just made, but he’s holding on too tight, and she pushes him away. The woman’s friend is singing along with the mariachi (the name refers both to the group and to its individual members), for perhaps the fifth time, a song called “Dos Almas” (“Two Souls”), but by now she can’t get anyone to listen to her and she weaves off in a huff. The amiable Chuy is still explaining Mexicanness to my companion, who is Peruvian. “A Mexican’s heart is always open and full of music,” he stammers, but a buddy of his, who spouts profanity and has in general a sharper-­edged vision of things, butts in. “A Mexican knows that life is worthless,” he declares. The mariachi singer Ismael Gutiérrez and his group charge twenty-­five thousand pesos, or about eight dollars, per song, but they offered Chuy and his friends the wholesale rate after serenading them with thirty rancheras. This meant that for a lucky evening of solid work each of the members of the Mariachi Real del Potosí, as the group Gutiérrez belongs to is called, got about thirty dollars. The group is small, and not first-­rate. There’s only one of each of the essential components of a mariachi: a violin; a guitar; a trumpet; a guitarrón, or fat bass guitar; a vihuela, or small plinking guitar; and the singer—­Gutiérrez. Like many of his fellow ­musicians who have land or a family trade in the provinces, Gutiérrez comes to Mexico City every fortnight or so from his home state—­San Luis Potosí, in his case—­a nd puts up at one of the scarred buildings around the plaza, where, he says, the old-­fashioned, high-­ceilinged rooms are crowded with bunk beds stacked as many as five high. There, he makes sure he gets at least eight hours’ sleep a day, to keep his voice going. That is also where he stores his costume, which is as essential to his occupation as any instrument. In the old days, before the movies, mariachis used to dress like what they were: peasant musicians. But when the Mexican movie industry began producing musicals, back in the thirties, mariachis in Indian dress—­big white shirts and trousers, and straw hats—­came to seem too ordinary, and someone decided to outfit them in the elegant mestizo dress of the charro, or horseman. Its basic elements are a broad-­brimmed felt hat, a short, fitted black jacket, and tight black trousers with double seams running down the outside of the leg. For show, charros decorated the seams with brass or silver fittings and with fancy embroidery. Mexico’s Hollywood kept the ornaments and the embroidery and added color. The majority of Garibaldi’s mariachis wear silver-­trimmed black, but now they do this to signify that they are free­

48  Alma Guillermoprieto

lancers, which means that if a customer approaches a guitarrón player, say, requesting a song, the musician has to pull an ensemble together from the other black-­clad freelancers standing around. Ismael Gutiérrez is a significant step up in the hierarchy: he belongs to a formally constituted group, and all the members of his Mariachi Real wear sober Prussian blue. Gutiérrez—­stout, cheerful, courtly, and equipped with a remarkable handlebar mustache—­ looks reassuring in his outfit, like a character out of an old-­time movie. Because Gutiérrez belongs to an established mariachi, he has been able to weather a disaster that has affected Garibaldi since the beginning of the year: construction of a new subway line began then, shutting off the main access road to the plaza and cutting down the number of potential customers so drastically that on any given Friday night the ratio of mariachis to revellers appears to be almost one to one. Gutiérrez and his mates have discovered the advantages of business cards, and by handing them out (printed with a more prosperous relative’s phone number) around local office buildings and to friendly customers, they have been able to make up for the loss of walk­by trade. Not so the free­lancer Jesús Rosas. Although he plays what his colleagues describe as “a very pretty trumpet,” all he can do now is dream of joining a group or landing a permanent job with the mariachis who play inside one of the huge cantinas, such as the famous Tenampa, that face on the plaza. Rosas is only twenty-­five, but he has been playing Garibaldi since he left home, more than a decade ago. He used to be in demand, because he plays well, knows a lot of songs, and has a particular affability, at once alert and courteous, friendly and firmly reserved, that is much prized by Mexicans. Now times are bad, but he is stubborn. While dozens of lesser mariachis are coping with the subway crisis by heading for the Reforma, a few blocks away, to flag down cars and hustle for customers, Rosas, who finds such a procedure completely undignified, remains in Garibaldi. “The plaza is here,” he says, but that means that by noon on most days he is already cruising it, his trumpet protectively cradled in a beat-­up vinyl carrying case, trying to make up in long hours for the clients he has lost. Mexico’s subway is a tremendous achievement: it is now one of the longest urban railroads in the world; it allows millions of people to crisscross the sprawling city to get to work on time every day; it did not collapse, or even buckle, during the earthquake that shattered much of the city seven years ago; it is clean; it runs smoothly. Its expansion has forced dozens of shop owners along the path of its construction into bankruptcy and brought the Garibaldi mariachis to the brink of despair, but if everything goes according to the official plan, once the station opens in 1993 Garibaldi will be overrun by ranchera devotees, and mariachi income will soar. Gutiérrez doesn’t think this will happen, because people who can afford mariachis travel by car. Never­theless, this is the kind of promise that Mexico’s rulers are constantly

Mexico City 1992  49

making to their subjects these days: severe sacrifices are being asked, and times are hard, but the country is being modernized, and when modernity arrives it will bring great rewards.

“Modernity” is the buzzword, and, although hardly anyone knows how to define it, even the people in Garibaldi can recognize its presence in their lives. Modernity is what makes the mariachi Guadalupe González—­a man who boasts that he beats his woman regularly, out of a traditional sense of duty (“She misses it if I don’t,” he explains)—­welcome the subway that Jesús Rosas dislikes. “Hay que modernizarse,” he admonishes Rosas, citing the contemporary imperative. Modernity is what makes Rosas look uncomfortable at the mention of wife-­beating by his elders, and it is also what makes his young fellow m ­ ariachis finish their ranchera practice and immediately tune in a rock station on the radio, to Rosas’s distress. Modernity is the guiding impulse behind the latest gambit by the travel agencies, which consists of bringing tourists to Garibaldi by the busload to be serenaded by musicians permanently under agency contract, instead of letting the tourists wander about in time-­honored fashion until they find a mariachi who strikes them as simpático. It used to be, Guadalupe González says, that first-­rate mariachis like him could deliver the traditional ranchera serenade outside the window of a house where a party was going on, and then prove their versatility by playing boleros, polkas, and even cha-­cha-­chas for the partygoers to dance to. Now, thanks to modernity, mariachis deliver their serenade and are waved away, and the party continues to the sound of a rock band, a cumbia group, or, worst of all, one of those tootling electronic organs with programmable rhythms and sound effects. Modernity, as it is understood here, means speed and high productivity and the kind of cost analysis that leads to one electronic organ rather than half a dozen friendly but expensively thirsty mariachis. Now that a finished text of the proposed North American Free Trade Agreement has been initialled by the trade ministers of Canada, the United States, and Mexico, the arrival of full-­scale modernity is assumed to be imminent. The terms of the treaty state that fifteen years after its final approval all tariffs and barriers to trade between the three countries will disappear. In effect, this means that the continent will become a single, gigantic market, and the government officials are already trumpeting the estimated benefits: great tonic shots of foreign investment that will make the economy roar. Less powerful people worry that they, like the mariachis, will lose their jobs to electronic substitutes. But a more common undercurrent of worry and doubt, in the endless private jokes, offhand conversational references, editorial cartoons, and television chat-­show allusions to the free-­trade treaty, is more abstract, and strikes deeper. What people want to know about the coming onslaught of modernity is: How Mexican is it to be modern? Or, rather, 50  Alma Guillermoprieto

since everything modern comes from a large, powerful country to the north, how Mexican is it to be like the United States? There is nothing new about such fears of cultural takeover, of course: Mexico has been under invasion from the United States in one form or another since the war in 1847 that cost the country half its territory, and since then the arrival of each new fad or technological improvement has been used by pessimists to herald the death of Mexican tradition. Rosas’s worry that the ranchera is a dying form is hardly original, but it is not paranoid. Rock music stations are increasingly numerous. Mariachi serenades are far less frequent. This doesn’t mean that Rosas’s rock-­humming contemporaries are less Mexican than he is; it simply means that their culture is more fragmented. The remarkable psychic sturdiness shared by the inhabitants of a city that often looks like the morning after the apocalypse may or may not owe something to cultural coherence, but, as every Latino teen­ager in Los Angeles knows, the combination of cultural fragmentation and social disadvantage can be poisonous. To the whiz kids from Harvard and the Sorbonne who are currently running the Mexican government, though, the diversification of Mexican culture is also rich with promise. Nationalism and tradition are retardatarios, cosmopolitanism is creative, and what used to be called cultural imperialism is now known as “the inevitable future.” . . . Whether economic apertura will lead to a final drowning of Mexican culture in United States sauce is not an entirely idle question—­at least, not when one is sitting in a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet and eating some of the first fast-­food tacos that Taco Bell is hoping to find a mass market for in Mexico City. . . .

I went to see the postmodern ranchera singer Astrid Hadad’s show . . . , and as she worked her way to a tiny stage through the crowded bar where she was performing she peddled tacos from a basket. “What kind would you like?” she asked her customers. “Now that we have the free-­trade treaty, I can offer you hamburger tacos, hot-­dog tacos, chili-­con-­carne tacos. . . .” For her presentations, Hadad likes to wear red lipstick with carnival glitter in it—­on her eyelids—­a nd a Jean Paul Gaultier–like cone-­shaped bra, which she later rips off and replaces with a big, anatomically accurate foam-­rubber heart. Her show, which has been attracting ever more loyal audiences over the last few years, relies heavily on the nostalgia value of ranchera music and on its inherent campiness, but it would not be so energetically appealing if her powerful voice were not a perfect vehicle for rancheras or if her understanding of a ranchera prototype—­the brassy, hard-­d rinking, love-­wounded dame—­ were not intuitive. Hadad belted out, “As if I were a sock, you step on me all day,” and her audience howled with laughter and the acid pleasure of recognition. When, in a frenzy of Mexican passion, she asked what would become of Mexico City 1992  51

her heart—­“this bleeding, burning, conquered, crunched, roasted, ground, blended, anguished heart”—­a couple of people in the audience rose to give her a standing ovation. Hadad had come onstage with peasant-­style braids and wearing a typical china poblana embroidered skirt. Now she loosened the braids, tore off the skirt to reveal a slinky black dress underneath, removed the heart from the dress’s strapless bodice, added long gloves, checked her image in an empty mirror frame, and retold the well-­k nown myth of Quetzalcoatl, the god-­k ing of Tula, and his rival Tezcatlipoca, or Smoking Mirror. “Tezcatlipoca is jealous because Quetzalcoatl is blond, so he gives him some pulque. Quetzalcoatl gets drunk, screws his own sister, wakes up with a terrible hangover, and sees his image in Tezcatlipoca’s mirror. He heads for the beach and sets sail, and as he leaves he promises to return. So he does, the blond, blue-­eyed god, and that’s how we discovered the joys of ”—­here Hadad licked her lips lasciviously—­“cultural penetration.” Offstage, Hadad turned out to be a tiny woman with a sharp Lebanese profile (it is a curious fact of cultural life here that many of the most devoted mexicanistas are themselves—­like Hadad and like Frida Kahlo—­fi rst-­or second-­generation Mexicans) and an intellectual manner. Not surprisingly, she declared that what first attracted her to rancheras was that they are so essentially Mexican. “I think it has to do with the attitude toward suffering that we inherited from the Aztecs,” she said. “It’s not that we have an extraordinary capacity for suffering—­everyone does. It’s the way we relish it. I think only Russians compare with us in that. And then there’s the element of machismo. Again, it’s not that men here beat their wives more, because I’m sure that Germans do it just as much; it’s that here they boast about it. Obviously, I’m very critical of that, but what keeps me coming back to the music is the passion. Now that we’re all becoming so rational and sensible, it’s getting harder and harder to find passion in our lives; I think that’s what we all seek in the ranchera.” I asked Hadad why she cracked so many jokes about the Free Trade Agreement in her show, and why she thought her audience was so responsive to them, and she said it was because of the enormous apprehension that people are feeling about it. She pointed out that even the great Mexican movie goddess María Félix had taken the unusual step of speaking out publicly against the treaty, warning that it might cause Mexican values—­not to mention ­factories—­to collapse. Like nearly everyone else who is fearful of the treaty, Hadad confessed that she had no idea what was in it. “But it seems obvious to me that the little guys—­us—­are not going to be the ones calling the shots,” she said. “The government gets all excited describing the wonderful things that will result from the treaty, but I say ‘What wonders?’ As far as I can make out, all it means is that in the future we’re going to be more like South Korea and less like us.”

52  Alma Guillermoprieto

This is, in fact, precisely what one of Salinas de Gortari’s bright young intellectuals described to me some time ago as his best hope: that if Mexico’s debt situation remains stable, if its workers can be persuaded to let wage increases remain just below the rate of inflation, if monetary policy and inflation itself continue under tight government control, enough foreign investment will land here “to turn this country into South Korea or maybe Taiwan.” . . .

I flew from Mexico City to Tijuana, a scorching-­hot border town that can be seen either as the hideous, seedy product of more than a century of cultural penetration or as the defiant, lively result of a hundred years of cultural resistance. Just a few miles south of San Diego, Tijuana reigns as the world capital of Spanglish, shantytowns, and revolting souvenirs, yet, despite it all, remains completely Mexican. The United States may be just an imaginary line away, but on this side of the line driving becomes more creative, street life improves, bribes are taken, and hairdos are more astonishing. I thought Tijuana would be a good place to catch a show by Juan Gabriel, a singer and prolific composer who is the most unlikely heir to the mantle of ranchera greatness that could ever be imagined. Juan Gabriel likes to perform at palenques, or cockfight arenas, which are a traditional element of state fairs. When I arrived at the Tijuana palenque, around midnight, several hundred people were watching the last fight, perched on chairs in a coliseumlike arrangement of concrete tiers surrounding a small circular arena. Those in the know say that hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of bets are placed in the course of a fight, but all I saw was half a dozen men with little notebooks standing in the arena, catching mysterious silent signals from the audience and scribbling down figures, while the two fighting cocks were displayed by their handlers. After a few minutes, the men with notebooks left, and the cocks, outfitted with razorlike spurs, were set on the ground. The cocks flew at each other, spurs first, while the audience watched in tense, breathless silence. In a matter of minutes, one of the animals lay trembling on the ground, its guts spilling out, and the other was proclaimed the victor, to a brief, dull cheer. Instantly, Juan Gabriel’s roadies moved in. The instruments they set up—­electric organ and piano, two sets of drums—­are not the ones normally associated with ranchera music, but then Juan Gabriel is not what one would think of as a typical mariachi singer. For starters, he is from the border himself—­from Ciudad Juárez, where he was born, and where he was raised in an orphanage. When he burst on the pop ­music scene, in the early seventies, radio audiences often mistook his high-­ pitched voice for a woman’s. His fey mannerisms became the subject of crude jokes. He has been press-­shy ever since a scurrilous book by a purported confidant fed hungry speculations about his sexual preferences. Yet, in this naMexico City 1992  53

tion of self-­proclaimed machos, Juan Gabriel has been able to perform before a standing-­room-­only crowd in the Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico’s Carne­ gie Hall. He lives in Los Angeles, uses electronic backups and percussion, and writes songs that never mention drunkenness or two-­or three-­timing women, but when men in Garibaldi drink and fall into the confessional mode these days their musical inspiration invariably includes songs composed by Juan Gabriel. As the first, wailing ranchera chords tore through the din and Juan Gabriel emerged from the bullpen, there was a roar from the palenque, and in the roar there was a call for blood. The composition of the audience had changed: a majority of women, mostly middle-­aged and in girls’-­n ight-­out groups, had filled the stands, along with a large minority of romantic couples and a dense sprinkling of men in groups. A lot of the men were wearing big norteño hats, and in the front row a group of couples and male buddies in big hats and heavy gold chains had set up beer cans and bottles of tequila along the concrete ledge that defined the arena space. The women in the audience were shouting their love for Juan Gabriel hysterically, but a couple of men behind me were shouting something quite different, and so were a lot of the men in big hats. “Marica!” and “Jotón!” they yelled, meaning “Fag!” or “Queer!” They yelled this over and over, and, because the cherub-­faced Juan Gabriel in his graying middle age has put on something of a paunch, someone improvised an insult that was quickly copied: “You’re pregnant, you faggot! Go home!” The men had paid between forty and sixty dollars a head to indulge in this pleasure, and Juan Gabriel, circling the arena slowly to acknowledge the majority’s applause, also acknowledged this generosity with a small, graceful curtsy before he began to sing. His music is proof of the fact that the ranchera has changed as much as Mexico has, and that in doing so it has survived. His backup singers at the palenque were two skinny, curvy black women in tight dresses: they chimed in on the chorus as required, but with distinctly gringo accents. Standing between them and his electronic band, Juan Gabriel sang and twirled to music from his pop repertoire, punctuating some of the jazzier songs with belly rolls and shimmies that drove the women and the machos wild in opposite ways. There was rather a lot of this cheerful music, and then he slowed down and began to sing a real ranchera, a song of bad love, loss, and pain, in which the composer makes abject offers to his departed love. In case the fugitive should ever decide to return, Juan Gabriel sang, “You’ll find me here, in my usual spot, in the same city, with the same crowd, so you can find everything just as you left it.” By the second verse, there was no need for him to sing at all, because the members of the audience were chanting the words for themselves with the rapt reverence accorded an anthem. “I just forgot again,” the audience sang, “that you never loved me.” I glanced at a couple of the big guys sitting in the front row, armed with their bottles of tequila, who had earlier 54  Alma Guillermoprieto

folded their arms protectively across their chests and smirked whenever Juan Gabriel wiggled in their direction. Now they were singing. A dozen fawn-­colored charro hats wobbled at the entrance to the bullpen, and the audience, seeing the mariachis arrive, roared itself hoarse with welcome. Gold decorations along the musicians’ trousers caught the light. The men lined up facing Juan Gabriel’s band, adjusted their hats, took up their instruments, and filled the palenque with the ripe, aching, heart-­torn sound of the mariachi. Juan Gabriel, singing this time about how hard it is to forget, was now not queening at all. The big guys sitting across from me leaned into each other, swaying companionably to the music, like everyone else in the audience. Behind me, the last heckler had finally shut up. Juan Gabriel sang a lilting huapango and a couple of sones, without pausing once for chatter. He segued from one song to the next or went through long medleys, the doo-­ wop girls bursting in occasionally with a trill or two. Then the girls left the stage, and so did the band. Juan Gabriel, alone with the mariachis, slowed down for the introductory chords of a song that begins, “Podría volver,” and, recognizing these, the audience squealed in ecstatic pain. “I could return, but out of sheer pridefulness I won’t,” the lyrics say, in what is perhaps the most perfect of a hundred ranchera hymns to the unbending pride of the loser. “If you want me to come back you should have thought of that before you left me.” Here and there, his listeners yelped as if some very tasty salt had just been rubbed into their national wound. Life hurts. I hurt. The hell with you: I’ll survive, Juan Gabriel sang. In the front row, the two big guys looked immensely happy, and just about ready to weep.1 Note 1. Sadly, Alberto Aguilar Valadez, known professionally as Juan Gabriel, died suddenly of a heart attack in Santa Monica, California, in 2016. Eds.

Mexico City 1992  55

Two Ranchera Songs José Alfredo Jiménez and Cuco Sánchez

As Alma Guillermoprieto so eloquently points out, the lyrics of ranchera songs are most often concerned with heartbreak, loss, betrayal, revenge, and self-­pity—­and all this to the accompaniment of soaring horns and violins. While cautioning readers to bear in mind that there is tremendous variety within the genre, we here include a small sample of the ranchera: very popular songs by two of the most renowned ranchera composers, José Alfredo Jiménez (1926–73) and Cuco Sánchez (1921–2000).

THE HORSEMAN by José Alfredo Jiménez In the far-­off mountains rides a horseman, Wandering alone in the world and wishing for death. In his breast he carries a wound, his soul is destroyed. He wants to lose his life and be reunited with his beloved. He loved her more than his own life, And he lost her forever. That’s why he is wounded, that’s why he seeks death. He spends whole nights singing with his guitar, Man and guitar weeping by the light of the stars. Then he loses himself in the night, and although the night is very beautiful, He asks God to bear him away to her, The woman he loved more than his own life, And lost forever. That’s why he is wounded, that’s why he seeks death.

THE BED OF STONE by Cuco Sánchez Let my bed and headboard be made of stone. The woman who loves me must love me truly. Ay yay yay, my love, why don’t you love me? 56

I went to the courtroom and asked the judge if it’s a crime to love you. He sentenced me to death. Ay yay yay, my love, why don’t you love me? The day they kill me, may it be with five bullets, And I will be very close to you, so as to die in your arms. Ay yay yay, my love, why don’t you love me? For a casket, I want a sarape, For a crucifix, my crossed ammunition belts. And upon my tombstone, write my final farewell with a thousand bullets. Ay yay yay, my love, why don’t you love me?

Two Ranchera Songs  57

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II Ancient Civilizations

If the analysts of “lo mexicano” agree on anything, it is that Mexico was home to magnificent civilizations and cultures prior to the coming of the Europeans, and that much of the country’s subsequent history has witnessed attempts to deny, suppress, and, more recently, politically incorporate the vestiges of those civilizations and cultures. During the independence period, some thinkers invoked the glories of ancient Mexico, but their sincerity is difficult to judge: they seem to have regarded those glories largely as a convenient rhetorical device to deny the legitimacy of the Spanish conquest and colonial rule, not to suggest that Mexico’s indigenous cultures be revived or even respected. The twentieth century, however, saw tremendous advances in understanding and appreciation of ancient Mexico, particularly after the Mexican revolution, through the National Institute of Anthropology and History (inah , in its Spanish acronym). Today a visit to the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City cannot help but overwhelm the visitor, and the ruins of the indigenous civilizations annually attract and impress countless thousands of tourists. The earliest civilizations of Mesoamerica began to take shape around 2000 bce; by 1200 bce impressive cities had been built and a distinctive Mesoamerican religion had evolved. Around ce 300, the region entered its so-­called classical period, a time when huge cities such as Teotihuacán in central Mexico, and the Zapotec city of Monte Albán, in the southern state of Oaxaca, dominated large territories. In the jungles and mountains to the southeast, the Maya erected splendid city-­states, created elaborate ceramics, studied the stars and planets, and developed a system of writing. By around ce 800–900, the classical civilizations entered into a decline that has still not been adequately explained. Subsequent cultures tended to be more fragmented and bellicose than their predecessors, but they nevertheless achieved a high degree of sophistication. In central Mexico, the region of the largest populations and highest development, successive waves of chichimecas, or nomadic peoples, moved in from the north to enjoy the good life on the fertile central plateau. One such group was the Mexica, today commonly known as the Aztecs, who are easily the best-­k nown of Mexico’s indigenous cultures. 59

After migrating into the lake region of central Mexico in the mid-­1200s, they endured years of tribulation before establishing what would become their awe-­inspiring capital city of Tenochtitlán. By the mid-­1400s, in alliance with other city-­states of the region, the Aztecs launched a campaign of imperial domination that would win them a precarious control of much of central and southern Mexico. Mesoamerican cultures were complex and sophisticated, but they also earned a reputation for brutality. Readers will surely ponder the different foci and interdisciplinary perspectives on Aztec civilization that appear in the selections below by Clendinnen and Bustamante and Elizalde. Collectively the readings aim to provide readers with a brief introduction to the mythology, religious beliefs and practices, values, and enduring legacy of these cultures, which, while certainly subordinated, continue to resonate in modern Mexico.

60  Ancient Civilizations

The Origins of the Aztecs Anonymous

Mesoamerican peoples believed that time moved cyclically. In contrast to the Western notion that time began at a certain moment and has developed in linear fashion ever since, for the Mesoamericans time was created and extinguished at regular intervals. The Aztecs believed themselves to be living in the epoch of the Fifth Sun, since four suns had existed and been extinguished prior to their appearance on earth. The belief that time could end gives insight into the seriousness with which Mesoamericans viewed their religious life: if either humans or gods failed to perform their functions faithfully and precisely, the light of day would be devoured and the world would cease to exist. The following excerpt is a brief account of the legend of the five suns. It was translated by anthropologist Thelma D. Sullivan from the Anales de Cuauhtitlán, part of the Codex Chimalpopoca. This account was written by Aztec authors some forty to fifty years after the Spanish conquest, but was based on certain older texts and traditions. It gives a clear sense of the fatalism and pervasive pessimism that tended to characterize the Mesoamerican worldview. . . . They had been wandering about shooting their arrows; they had no houses, they had no land, they had no woven capes as clothing; only hides, only Spanish moss did they use to cover themselves. And their children grew up in mesh bags, in cagelike crates used for carrying things. They ate the prickly pear, the barrel cactus, the tetzihoactli, and the bitter prickly pear. They suffered great hardships for 364 years until they arrived in the city, Quauhtitlan. In that year it began, it originated the rule of the Chichimeca, the people of Quauhtitlan. It must told, it must be understood . . . that while on their way they gave themselves a king.

61

During these years, of the Chichimeca’s wandering, it is said, it is recounted that it was still the time of darkness. They say that it was still the time of darkness because as yet no fame, no glory was theirs; there was no joyousness. They wandered from place to place. . . . In the first age, according to accounts, according to the recollections of the ancients for they knew it . . . the earth, the world, came into existence, was established. . . . It is recounted, it is said that four kinds of life were created. . . . The old men knew that in 1-­Rabbit, in that year the earth and heaven were established, and they also knew that when the earth and heaven were established there were four kinds of beings, four kinds of life were created. They knew that each one was a Sun. And they said that he created, he fashioned their gods from ashes; they attributed this to Quetzalcoatl. . . . In the beginning was the first Sun, 4-­Water was its sign; it was called the Sun of Water. In this Sun all was carried off by water, the people were transformed into dragonfly larvae and into fish. The second Sun was established. 4-­Jaguar was its sign; it was called the Jaguar Sun. In this Sun it happened that the heavens collapsed, that the Sun did not move on its course from its zenith. It began to darken, when all was dark, then the people were devoured. And Giants lived in this Sun. The elders say that their greeting to each other was “May you not fall,” 62  Anonymous

because everyone who fell, fell forevermore. The third Sun was established. 4-­Rain was its sign; it was called the Sun of Rain. In this Sun it occurred that it rained fire and the people were consumed by fire. . . . It rained stones. They now say that this was when the stones we now see fell, and the lava rock boiled up. And also, it was when the great rocks formed into masses, and became red. The fourth Sun: 4-­Wind was its sign; it was called the Sun of Wind. In this Sun all was carried off by the wind, the people turned into monkeys. And afterward the monkey men that lived there dispersed about the forests. The fifth Sun: its symbol is 4-­Motion. It was called the Sun of Motion because it moves, it follows a course. And say the ancients: that in this Sun it shall come to pass that the earth shall move, that there shall be famine, and that we all shall perish. . . . In the year 13-­Reed, they say that the Sun that now exists was created. At that time the Sun of Movement arose at dawn, gave its light. . . . In this fifth Sun the earth shall move, there shall be famine, then we shall perish.

The Origins of the Aztecs  63

The Feast of the Flaying of Men Inga Clendinnen

Without a doubt, the most famous aspect of Aztec culture is its propensity for violent ritual, most notably human sacrifice on a grand scale. This fact has presented historians with a dilemma, for it seems that too much emphasis on such gory practices promotes sensationalism and only serves to distract readers from more noble and seemly aspects of Aztec society, as well as from the everyday life and culture of the people. The best historians, of course, seek not to sensationalize but to explain. Few in recent years can rival the late cultural historian Inga Clendinnen, formerly professor at La Trobe University in Australia. In the following article, she examines the remarkably complex rituals of warfare and sacrifice in order to achieve some understanding of what these rituals actually meant to the Aztecs. She argues that to gloss over or ignore Aztec ritual is to overlook the very thing that the Aztecs themselves viewed as their most important function on earth. For the Aztecs, particularly the ruling elites, warfare and ritual were functions of their religion. In Aztec ideology, Clendinnen demonstrates, battlefields were considered hallowed ground. Bloody rituals—­executions and deliberate mutilations—­were enacted to show that human flesh and maize (representing all nourishing crops) were the same sacred matter in different stages of one cycle. The point of brutal-­seeming rituals was not to destroy; it was to make clear that human actions could help balance cyclic transformations that were always in danger. Through meticulous analysis of Aztec ritual, warfare, and mythology, Clendinnen reframes these acts of violence as profound experiences that informed individuals’ deepest conceptions of their place in society, nature, and the cosmos. A simple notion of the unforeseen and undesired consequences of military expansion will not penetrate far into [the nature of violence in Aztec society]. Only through the glass of ritual, smoky and obscure as that glass is, do we have much chance of discerning how violence, on the field of battle and off it, was understood, and how warrior and civilian society cohered. . . . With the first gathering of the agricultural harvest and the onset of the frosts the Aztec season of war began. Eighty days after that harvest, the first crop of warrior captives was killed, and eighty days after that, as the first signs of spring indicated the beginning of the planting season, came the Feast of the Flaying of Men. It was an important festival in that its first two days 64

and all the evenings of the twenty days to follow required the attendance of those in authority in Tenochtitlán. It starred the warriors, especially the great warriors, and it honored Xipe Totec, the Flayer or the Flayed One, who was associated with the east, a zone of plenty, and with the early spring, and who was represented by a priest wearing a flayed human skin, and a mask of a flayed human face. The first day of the festival saw the killing of the less important war captives. The victims, decked in elaborate regalia, were brought from the local warrior houses in which they had been kept, tended, and displayed since their capture, and delivered by their captors to the priests waiting at the foot of Xipe’s pyramid in the main temple precinct. Ideally they were meant to go leaping up the steps of the pyramid, shouting the chants of their city as they went, and some did: others had to be dragged up by the priests. At the top, before the shrine, they were flipped on their backs over a small upright stone, a priest securing each limb, while a fifth priest struck open the chest with a flint knife, took out the heart, and raised it toward the sun. The body was sent hurtling and tumbling down the stairs to be collected at the bottom by old men from the appropriate ward temple, where they carried it to be flayed and dismembered, probably by the captor. One thigh was reserved to Moctezuma, the other and most of the rest of the body going to the captor, who summoned his kin to a feast at his house. There, amid weeping and lamentations, the kinsmen of the captor each ate a small piece of flesh served with a dish of “dried” (unsoftened?) maize kernels. The captor himself, whose splendid captor’s regalia had been replaced by the white chalk and feathers which marked the victim destined for the killing stone, did not participate in the feast. The killings at the pyramid went on for much of the day. It is difficult to establish the numbers usually killed—­presumably that varied according to the fortunes of war—­but perhaps sixty or so died. . . . But it is what happened later on that second day which seems to have been the most compelling sequence in the whole complex affair. It also involved a mode of killing specially identified with the Aztecs, revived in Tenochtitlán to mark the victory of Moctezuma the Elder over the Huastecs. For this ritual only the greatest captives were selected, their captors being accordingly the more honored. The victims were chosen to die on what the Spaniards later dubbed the gladiatorial stone, at the base of Xipe’s pyramid. They had been rehearsed for the occasion. Their captors had presented them to the people in a sequence of different regalias over the preceding four days, at the place where they were to die. There they were forced to engage in mock combats, and then to submit to a mock heart excision, the “hearts” being made of unsoftened maize kernels. The night before their deaths they spent in vigil with the captors, their warrior lock being cut and taken at midnight. Then early in the afternoon of that second day of Xipe’s festival they The Feast of the Flaying of Men  65

Gladiatorial sacrifice. Artist unknown, ca. sixteenth century. From the Codex Magliabechiano, fol. 30r, Biblioteca Nazionale, Florence, Italy.

were marshalled close to the stone, their captors still beside them, before assembled dignitaries and as many other people as could fit into the temple precinct, as four of the greatest Aztec warriors, two from the order of Jaguar warriors, two from the order of Eagles, presented their weapons in dedication to the sun. Then down from Xipe’s pyramid came in procession the high priest of Xipe Totec in the regalia of his lord, followed by the other high priests as representatives of their deities, to take their seats around the gladiatorial stone. This was a performance worthy of the contemplation of the gods. The stone was about waist high, and a meter and a half wide, but set on an elevated platform about the height of a man. The first victim, now stripped of his regalia and clad only in a loincloth, was given a draught of “obsidian wine”—­pulque, the Aztec alcoholic drink, probably spiked with a drug from their ample pharmacopoeia—­a nd tethered by the waist to a rope fastened at the center of the stone. He was presented with weapons; four pine cudgels for throwing, and a war club. The club was studded not with flint or obsidian blades, but with feathers. Then the first Jaguar warrior, equipped with a real club, advanced and engaged him in combat. There must have been a system of timing of rounds or of counting passes or exchanges, although it is not recorded, because exceptionally fine fighters were sometimes able to survive the assaults of all four warriors. In those cases a fifth warrior, a left-­hander, was brought into play to bring him down. When he was down, the lord Xipe advanced, struck open the breast, and cut 66  Inga Clendinnen

out the heart, which was raised “as a gift” to the sun, and then placed in the eagle vessel in which it would be later burned. The priest then submerged a hollow cane in the blood welling in the chest cavity, and raised the cane, so, as it was said, “giving the sun to drink.” The captor was given the cane and a bowl of the blood which he carried throughout the city, daubing the blood on the mouths of the stone idols in all the temples. The circuit completed, he went to Moctezuma’s palace to return the magnificent regalia of he who offers a victim at the gladiatorial stone, and from there went back to his local temple to flay and dismember his captive’s body. And then, later in the day, he watched his lamenting kin eat the maize stew and the flesh of his captive, while they wept for their own young warrior. He did not participate, saying, “Shall I perchance eat my very self ?” Meanwhile at the foot of Xipe’s pyramid other victims had been tethered to the stone, and had fought and died. At the end of the day, when the last of the victims had been dispatched, the priests performed a dance with the severed heads, which were then skewered on the skull rack beside the stone. It is obvious even from this sketchy account that a great many things were going on, but I want to focus on what was understood to be happening on the actual stone. There are a thousand ways of killing a man, but why tether him to a stone, restricting his movements but giving him the advantage of height? Why arm him with a club, a formidable weapon in its weight and reach, but with its effectiveness reduced by the replacement of its cutting blades with feathers? And why, given this finely calculated inequality, did the victim cooperate? It was clearly imperative that he fight, and fight as well as he was able: for this ritual only warriors from tribes fully participant in Aztec understandings of war were chosen. He could not fight for his life, for that was forfeit. Why then? He, like his Aztec counterparts, had been long prepared. From his earliest days those who spoke for society had made his mission plain: to give the sun the hearts of enemies, and to feed the insatiable earth with their bodies. Every lad training in the warrior houses knew that access to the warrior paradise in the House of the Sun was restricted to those who died in either of two ways: on the field of battle, where death was rare, given that the end of combat was the taking of captives, or on the killing stone. That death he had to strive to desire, or at least to embrace. Just as only ritual action made “victory” from the outcome of battle, so for the individual warrior action on the field of battle was consummated only later, and ritually. Behind the desperate excitements of battle lay the shadow of the killing stone, and a lonely death among strangers. This is why the captor, in the midst of the adulation accorded him for having taken a victim for the sun, wore at the cannibal feast of his kin the chalk and down of the victim; why the kin lamented; why he could not eat of what was indeed his “own flesh,” for he too, ideally, would die on the stone, and his flesh be eaten in another city. In the rhetoric The Feast of the Flaying of Men  67

of Aztec ideology the battlefield was as much a sacred space as the temple precinct—­or as much as human confusions and the terrible contingency of war permitted. But it was only on the stone that the meaning of the death could be made manifest. To be overcome in battle was not fortuitous: it was the sign that the warrior was a warrior no longer, and had begun the transition to victim. From the moment of the seizing of the warrior lock his separation from the ordinary world began. The “rehearsals,” as we might cynically call them—­the garments changed again and again, the mock combats at the stone, the mock heart excisions—­a ll marked his passage to increased sacredness. Then, with the taking of his warrior lock of hair, “the eagle man was taken upward”—­ that is, the warrior made his flight to the sun: before his physical death the individual was extinguished, the transition completed. It was as victim that he watched other men from his city, men he had known when they were alive, fight, and die on the stone, until it was his turn for a last display of maximum valor, the exemplary passionate acceptance of his fate. And if he died well his praises would be sung in the warrior houses of his home place. The deeper fascination [of] that combat was the most comprehensive metaphor for Aztec understanding of how human society, the world, and the cosmos worked. The endless repetitious struggles between the natural elements were endlessly replicated in the ritual ball game, in the mock combats which studded the ritual cycle, and in this most solemn contest on the gladiatorial stone.

68  Inga Clendinnen

The Totocalli (Motecuhzoma’s “Zoo”) Andrés Bustamante Agudelo and Israel Elizalde Méndez

The relationship between Mesoamerican societies and the natural world has been the subject of fascination since the sixteenth century, when Spanish soldiers marveled at the sight of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán. In order to establish a flourishing city in the middle of Lake Texcoco, the Aztecs developed a sophisticated water management system to mitigate the effects of flooding and, in an ambitious feat of engineering, constructed “Nezahualcóyotl’s dike” to separate the lake’s fresh and brackish waters. They farmed the shallow and fertile lake bed to feed a large urban population, harnessing a long tradition of chinampa agriculture that is still practiced today. (A chinampa is an artificial island in shallow fresh water used by the Aztecs and other Mesoamerican Indians to grow crops.) Moreover, as this selection—­a collaboration between Andrés Bustamante Agudelo, a historian at Yale University, and Israel Elizalde Méndez, an archaeologist at inah ’s Proyecto Templo Mayor—­explores, the rulers of the city kept a collection of exotic animals that has come to be known as “Moctezuma’s Zoo.” 1 In the same way that Inga Clendinnen highlighted the degree to which our understanding of the Aztecs has been filtered through popular fixations with blood and violence, scholars have noted the effects of romanticized colonial tropes on our visions of historical environmental relations. For example, the stereotype of the “ecological Indian”—­first deployed by early settlers, popularized by old Hollywood, and most recently revived by the environmental movement—­has simultaneously cast indigenous people as members of a “vanishing race” and as caretakers of fragile ecosystems under threat by the onslaught of modernity. Alternatively, cataclysmic accounts of an ecologically precipitated “Maya collapse” have captured the public’s attention. These narratives have material consequences for the lives of contemporary indigenous communities, and recent scholarship has begun to critically reassess them. Interdisciplinary research that privileges indigenous knowledge—­bringing together archival, visual, archaeological, and scientific methods, as well as community-­led projects—­ seeks to understand how the peoples of the ancient Americas made sense of the worlds that they inhabited and their place within them. In this case, rethinking the “zoo” becomes an opportunity to engage more broadly with indigenous practices of statecraft and conceptions of the cosmos. During the reign of Ahuitzotl (Year 7 Rabbit–10 Rabbit [1486–1502 ce]), the eighth tlatoani (ruler) of Tenochtitlán, priests deposited the body of a female 69

Mexican wolf in front of the Huey Teocalli or “Templo Mayor.” This monumental pyramid with twin temples at its summit dedicated to Tlaloc, the ancient rain god, and Huitzilopochtli, the god of war, was the most sacred site in the Aztec capital. Adorned with ornaments reserved for royalty, the wolf wore a necklace made of sixty-­four green stone beads, a seashell belt, and anklets with gold bells. Here, in a basalt box interred next to the monolith of the earth deity Tlaltecuhtli, the wolf became part of a larger assemblage of beings and objects that materialized, in miniature, both an imperial ideology and an understanding of the cosmos. In this same box, atop the wolf, priests placed a layer of marine fauna—­ including shells, sea snails, coral, chitons, fish, sea urchins, and crabs—­that had been transported alive from both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. At the very top of this offering lay two golden eagles, one male and one female, dressed as warriors with gold and copper bell anklets and a ring-­shaped pectoral made of mother-­of-­pearl. This act of gathering such different animals in a compressed space produced a cosmogram that united the watery under­ world, the terrestrial domains, and the celestial realms. Moreover, their origins in a diversity of distant ecosystems attested to the rapid territorial expansion of the Aztec Empire. This ritual cache, known as “Offering 125,” is only one of many such deposits that the archaeologists of the Urban Archaeology Program, directed by Raúl Barrera, and the Templo Mayor Project, now led by Leonardo López Luján, have unearthed from beneath present-­day Mexico City. The more than two hundred offerings found thus far around the Huey Teocalli include, among others, the remains of crocodiles, sharks, rattlesnakes, boas, pumas, jaguars, wolves, white herons, hawks, and a toucan. The presence of such astounding biological diversity at the heart of a populous urban center is remarkable. Indeed, the majority of these species are not native to the central Mexican highlands and would have had to be transported hundreds of miles to reach Tenochtitlán. At the same time, many of the animals excavated here were not newcomers to the city and, in fact, had spent portions of their lives in captivity in the imperial metropolis in what has come to be popularly known as “Moctezuma’s Zoo.” Colonial sources, penned in the sixteenth century in the midst and aftermath of the Spanish invasion, described an impressive complex of buildings and patios within the palace compounds where rulers kept “fearsome beasts” and “exotic birds.” For the European authors who relied on these eyewitness accounts to craft their histories of the conquest of Mexico, this collection of animals appeared familiar in the tradition of Renaissance and early modern menageries. They sought to explain what was to them an unknown world via analogy. In this way, pumas and jaguars became “lions” and “tigers” and a series of vast enclosures became a “menagerie.” These comparisons obscured more than they revealed. 70  Andrés Bustamante Agudelo and Israel Elizalde Méndez

Since 1978, with the initiation of excavations at the Templo Mayor site coordinated by Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, archaeological investigations have contextualized and transformed what was known about the Aztecs from textual sources. If this was not simply a space of leisure and exotica in the model of a European court menagerie, what was the nature of this space that the Mexica (as the Aztecs called themselves) knew as the Totocalli? Furthermore, what can the lives of these animals and their long-­d istance travels tell us about Mesoamerican imperial politics and cosmologies?

Entering the Totocalli As Hernán Cortés and his expedition ventured inland from Veracruz and then across central Mexico after the fall of Tenochtitlán, they passed through some of the most important cities in Mesoamerica, occasionally staying as guests of local rulers with whom they forged alliances. In addition to houses of governance, temples, and markets, these urban centers incorporated green spaces that integrated the natural and the built environment—­a lthough this categorical distinction was less meaningful for indigenous societies than it was for their European counterparts. Along their journey, the Spaniards described the gardens of Iztapalapa, Chapultepec, and Oaxtepec, and the hunting grounds at Tetzcotzingo and Tepepulco. Yet none of these splendid spaces captured their imagination quite like the Totocalli in Tenochtitlán. Founded on an island in the middle of Lake Texcoco, the city of México-­ Tenochtitlán grew from a minor settlement in the Valley of Mexico into the most powerful altepetl or city-­state in the Triple Alliance—­the coalition formed with Texcoco and Tlacopan now commonly known as the Aztec Empire. Surrounded by water, interwoven by canals that allowed canoes to bring goods into the markets each day, and connected to the mainland via causeways, Tenochtitlán lay at the heart of a vast network that linked it not only to neighboring cities on the shore, but also to the distant outposts of its powerful empire. In the middle of the city, a ceremonial precinct—­ encompassing a ball court and temples dedicated to important deities like the wind god Ehecatl-­Quetzalcoatl—­transformed Tenochtitlán into a sacred landscape that reproduced the Mexica cosmos on a human scale, with the Huey Teocalli as its axis mundi. Alongside these temples, monumental palace compounds incorporated not only the tlatoani’s sumptuous residences, courts, warriors’ chambers, and storehouses for food and other precious items, but also the Totocalli. In reality, the Totocalli was not a singular structure; rather, there were two distinct sites within the city dedicated to housing animals. Moreover, although the word totocalli (or totocalco) literally means “house of the birds” in Nahuatl, these sites were home to a broader array of beings. The first ­vivarium—­to use a more expansive term—­was located to the west of the The Totocalli (Motecuhzoma’s “Zoo”)  71

Palace of Axayacatl, the sixth tlatoani of Tenochtitlán. Here water tanks made of tezontle (a volcanic rock) accommodated all manner of fish, aquatic birds, and reptiles. The second vivarium—­which held raptors, birds with colorful plumage, and mammals of all sizes—­lay near the ancient palace of Motecuhzoma II, where the National Palace is today. These enclosures held a privileged space within the urban layout through their proximity to sites of power. The sixteenth-­century colonist and historian Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo estimated that the ​Totocalli near Motecuhzoma’s palace covered ​550 square meters, an area equivalent to twice the size of a doubles tennis court. The city’s strategic position in a lacustrine environment, combined with the mild climate of central Mexico, facilitated the efficient management of a diversity of ecologically specific spaces for the various animals. Bernal Díaz del Castillo, an experienced foot soldier in the Spanish expeditionary force, recalled walking through the interior passageways that connected these different rooms and hearing what he described as the “infernal noise” of the roars, howls, and hisses. Large mammals were kept in individual, low-­ lying wooden cages secured to the ground. The aviaries incorporated both enclosed spaces and patios covered by finely woven reed netting, affording shelter from the elements and access to fresh air. Reptiles—­especially snakes—­lived in large earthenware vessels, some of which contained soil, water, and bundles of feathers where they could build nests to lay their eggs. Finally, aquatic fauna lived in tanks filled with fresh or salt water, depending on their natural habitat. Beyond the physical facilities, the vivarium relied on a complex social infrastructure. The Mexica sovereign employed a group of mayordomos or “stewards” with specialized skills and training to oversee the animals. Some accounts stated that between three hundred and six hundred people labored within the Totocalli, but it is difficult to know the accuracy of these numbers. Every day they fed the animals seeds, grains, fruit, fish, or meat in the hopes of replicating their natural diet. In some cases, however, the stomach contents of animals excavated at the Huey Teocalli reveal artificial consumption patterns shaped by their captivity, like the partial remains of three quails found in a golden eagle. Stewards were also charged with cleaning the cages, nests, and water tanks. Most importantly, many of the animals required high levels of care. Andrés de Tapia, one of Cortés’s captains, reported that sick or injured birds were taken to a separate “house” to be healed. The effects of this care are evident in the osteological record, which presents some of the most compelling evidence that several of the animals deposited at the Huey Teocalli had lived in captivity. For example, fractured bones from excavated skeletal remains show signs of healing and subsequent growth. Injuries like these could have been fatal outside the Totocalli, either resulting in immediate death or jeopardizing an animal’s long-­term survival. Birds would have been unable 72  Andrés Bustamante Agudelo and Israel Elizalde Méndez

to fly while their wing fractures mended. In some instances, as with one of the eagles in “Offering 125,” they never regained their flight. Through human intervention, however, many did recover. At the same time, there were inherent limitations. Zooarchaeological studies have uncovered canine, feline, and avian remains exhibiting ailments in bone articulations that affected the mobility of the animal’s vertebral column or legs. These pathological markers emerged from a lack of mobility and were common in cases where animals were in constant contact with a hard surface or were confined to small spaces. Physical traces like these yield important information about the diseases that afflicted animals. Moreover, they highlight the challenges of maintaining a healthy population of animals in an artificial environment.

Beyond Tenochtitlán The Totocalli was a fundamentally urban space, but it was also intimately tied to the world beyond Tenochtitlán and the politics of imperial expansion. Acquiring species from remote regions required sophisticated commercial and tributary relations, as well as systems of transportation. Feathers, skins, and even live animals circulated through these networks of exchange alongside cacao and precious greenstones. Commerce and territorial expansion developed hand in hand. The pochteca, merchants trading in high-­value goods, acted almost as an imperial vanguard. In order to acquire rare prestige items, they traveled past the limits of the empire—­namely south toward the tropical lowlands either via X ­ icalanco on the Gulf Coast or through Soconusco on the Pacific—­a nd brought back local knowledge that facilitated conquest and, subsequently, governance. These ventures paralleled an intensification of the state’s military efforts to subdue neighboring kingdoms and communities, incorporating them via tributary relations. Additionally, the Mexica arranged matrimonial alliances with other noble families or forged coalitions with independent provinces to ensure the free movement of warriors and merchants. At its peak in the year 1 Reed (1519 ce), under Motecuhzoma II, the Triple Alliance controlled most of central Mexico, as well as Oaxaca and vast coastal regions along the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. These new political and economic structures guaranteed access to previously unattainable resources. Administrative records produced to document tribute payments registered a multitude of items, including bundles of quetzal feathers, jaguar pelts, deerskins, and live golden eagles. This process was dynamic and circular. Members of elite warrior units named after powerful animals—­“Eagle” and “Jaguar”—­wore regalia made of feathers and animal skins that vested them with the strength of these predators when they entered battle. Their military campaigns expanded the reach The Totocalli (Motecuhzoma’s “Zoo”)  73

Record of the tribute payments from the province of Xilotepec, which included textiles, warriors’ costumes, maize, beans, and live golden eagles. Drawing by Agostino Aglio, based on the Codex Mendoza, fol. 31r, from Antiquities of Mexico: Comprising Facsimiles of Ancient Mexican Paintings and Hieroglyphics, vol. 1, by Lord Kingsborough (London: Robert Havell and Colnaghi, Son, and Co., 1831), 75. Original manuscript in Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, ms. Arch. Selden. A. 1.

of the Triple Alliance and facilitated the creation of the very networks that, in turn, brought these prized animals back to the center of the empire. Although the “zoo” is commonly associated with Motecuhzoma II because he was the ruler when the Spaniards arrived in Mexico, these vivaria were not an innovation unique to the reign of the ninth tlatoani. Indeed, across Mesoamerica, large-­scale animal captivity had a long history that predated the Mexica. Burials under Teotihuacan’s Pyramid of the Moon—­dating to between 250 and 300 ce, over a thousand years before the founding of Tenochtitlán—­brought together numerous animals, notably apex predators like the Mexican gray wolf, golden eagles, rattlesnakes, and pumas. Nawa Sugiyama’s zooarchaeological investigations have provided a strikingly vivid record of animal captivity in Teotihuacan. The earthen imprint of long-­ decayed wooden cages, traces of feces, and the lack of physical markers of a sacrificial death all suggest that the pumas in one of the excavated burials may have been interred alive. By the postclassic period (900–1521 ce), sources attest to the presence of animal enclosures among the Huastec, Tlaxcalteca, Texcocan, and Purepecha peoples.2 For the most part, sovereigns demonstrated a predilection for raptors and birds with precious feathers, but rulers in certain major centers also kept large mammals. Jerónimo de Alcalá’s Relación de Michoacán, compiled between 1539 and 1541, recounted that the Purepecha cazonci (ruler) had a “house” for jaguars, pumas, and wolves that would be ceremonially offered once they reached adulthood. Vivaria also existed beyond the Gulf Coast and central Mexican highlands. For example, in Chihuahua, at the site of Paquime (1200–1450 ce), large adobe constructions functioned as pens for a colony of macaws. The birds first arrived via commercial exchange with the tropical lowlands, but were then also bred locally to ensure continued access to their bright-­red plumage. Far to the south, the rulers of the Maya kingdom of Copan (426–822 ce) similarly engaged in patterns of animal management that allowed them to deposit jaguars and pumas as part of ceremonies that marked dynastic successions or projected political authority in moments of crisis. Clearly, the vivaria the Spaniards encountered at Tenochtitlán were only the culmination of a far more widespread and ancient Mesoamerican tradition.

Neither Menagerie nor Zoo The Totocalli defies Renaissance and early modern European understandings of a “menagerie” or, for that matter, our own contemporary ideas of a “zoo.” Certainly, there were important parallels and points of convergence. After all, the Totocalli had balconies from which the tlatoani and his guests could observe the animals. Undoubtedly the vivarium was a space of leisure, entertainment, and fascination. At the same time, it also operated in ways The Totocalli (Motecuhzoma’s “Zoo”)  75

that were far more materially driven and that fundamentally challenged European conceptions of the boundaries of the “human” world. At the most basic level, the vivarium was a source of animal products for both ritual use and the manufacture of prestige goods. In addition to the patios and enclosures, the Totocalli contained workshops for gold- and silver­smiths, lapidaries, painters, carvers, and feather workers. These artists, employed directly by the tlatoani to produce items that would circulate in a managed ritual and gift economy, acquired rare and valuable materials from the vivarium. Specialists in the aviary periodically plucked the brilliant plumage of birds like troupials and cotingas, taking care to ensure that the feathers would grow back. Once collected, feathers could be stored in the Teocalco (the royal treasury) or taken directly to the workshop of the amanteca—­skilled featherwork artists who produced garments like headdresses and cloaks, and adorned items like shields using a feather mosaic technique. Feline pelts were given an array of uses. Besides constructing regalia for warriors, these skins could also become the covers for sacred books or jaguar thrones for rulers. Long bones from birds and mammals were fashioned into tools for ritual bloodletting. For certain objects, artists collaborated across media, playing with the tangible properties and possibilities of each element. In some cases, the visual and physical qualities of these materials held a deeper significance. For example, the iridescence of colorful feathers captivated the Mexica. This luminosity appeared to be the emanation of tonalli, an animating solar force that all living beings possessed. While the tributary provinces also produced high-­quality items destined for the capital, archaeological excavations have uncovered evidence of the impressive productivity of the tlatoani’s artists. Ximena Chávez Balderas’s study of “Offering 126” found a deposit of more than nine thousand bones corresponding to a diversity of animal species. Some of these bones had been manipulated, as with several unfinished awls made of canine and feline bones that bore markers of local workmanship. This assortment of partial remains appears to be a consecrated refuse pile, perhaps the ritually discarded remnants from the fabrication of animal pelts and other crafts taking place in the Totocalli’s workshops. Beyond the production of elite artifacts, the Totocalli’s animals also played a critical role in the ceremonial life of Tenochtitlán. As the contents of “Offering 125” demonstrate, their compositional arrangement as part of a cache could capture the structure of the cosmos, with animals originating in distinct ecosystems representing different physical realms. Animals might also be associated with specific deities because of their physical or behavioral traits that evoked supernatural forces. For example, the Mexica envisioned the earth as Cipactli, the giant crocodile monster floating atop the primor76  Andrés Bustamante Agudelo and Israel Elizalde Méndez

dial waters. This association with the creation of the world is echoed in the calendrical sequence of day names, which begins with the sign “1 Cipactli.” In this capacity as a primeval being, crocodilian remains were deposited at the corners and axes of the Huey Teocalli during its fourth construction phase, perhaps in acts of ritual foundation. In the same way that the skilled hands of artists shaped animal materials from the Totocalli into precious objects for the tlatoani’s court, animal remains could also be deployed to effect metaphysical transformations in humans. For the Mexica, “deities” were not gods with fixed attributes in a pantheon. Rather, they were the manifestations of a life force that exists within everything in the world. By donning the attire of a deity in important ceremonies, individuals (or even objects like sculptures and anthropomorphic flint knives) could channel this life force and become the iixiptla—­the image or physical representation—­of the god. In “Offering 111,” priests interred a young boy of around five years as an iixiptla of Huitzilopochtli, the patron deity of Tenochtitlán who was often depicted as a hummingbird or an eagle. The boy wore an anahuatl, a wooden ring pendant associated with war gods, and had the wings of a hawk strapped to his shoulders. Through this act of adornment, the priests were not simply depositing an offering to the god, but interring the god himself. This conception of a permeable boundary between the “human,” the “natural,” and the “supernatural” requires a broader meditation on Mexica understandings of the Totocalli as a “vivarium.” In their lengthy accounts of the Totocalli, Spanish chroniclers emphasized that this space was also home to people. Using dehumanizing language, they wrote that within certain rooms lived “monstrous people with dwarfism and hunched backs,” as well as “men, women, and children born with white faces, bodies, hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes.” One of the few surviving visual sources for the Totocalli, the 1524 Nuremberg Map of Tenochtitlán—­a plan of the capital and the Gulf of Mexico that accompanied the publication of the Latin translations of Cortés’s letters to Emperor Charles V—­shows a grid at the edge of the city center labeled “domus animalium” with small figures in each box. This image depicts not only birds and what appear to be large mammals, but also two humans. Although the Spaniards viewed people with albinism or curved backs or of short stature as “monstrous,” they occupied a far more complex place within Mexica society. Across Mesoamerica, people with non-­normative bodies were high-­status individuals. In some cases, their physical characteristics were viewed as markers of supernatural powers that associated them with particular deities. Among the Maya, people of short stature appear in scenes painted on ceramic vessels as members of royal courts, often as mirror bearers seated next to rulers. For the Mexica in Tenochtitlán, they were both entertainers and trusted advisers. In a society that adhered to strict sumptuary laws, it is notable that some written records described them wearing feline The Totocalli (Motecuhzoma’s “Zoo”)  77

(top) Nuremberg Map of Tenochtitlán and the Gulf of Mexico, from Praeclara Ferdinandi Cortesii de Nova maris Oceani Hyspania Narratio (Nuremberg: Friedrich Peypus, 1524). John Carter Brown Map Collection, B524 C827p / 1-­size. Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University. (bottom) Detail of Nuremberg Map of Tenochtitlán. This structure on the edge of Tenochtitlán’s ceremonial center, labeled “domus animalium,” represents the animals and people who lived in the Totocalli. Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University.

pelts, a privilege usually reserved for rulers and warriors. Moreover, people of short stature were buried alongside the tlatoani to accompany him into the underworld. Their presence in the Totocalli may suggest that the Mexica understood the vivarium within a far more expansive and flexible framework as a space where special and powerful beings lived. However, without the voices of the people in the Totocalli, we are left with more questions than answers—­critical questions about Mexica cosmologies that necessitate further research and reflection.

Destruction and Afterlife The fall of Tenochtitlán in 1521 to Spanish and allied indigenous forces radically reshaped the city. Facing fierce resistance from the capital’s inhabitants, the invading parties began demolishing the temples and houses of governance. This destruction was both infrastructural and deeply symbolic, targeting the spiritual and political heart of the empire. In 1522, in his third letter to Charles V, Cortés declared that he had ordered the looting and burning of the palaces—­including the Totocalli—­precisely because he understood their significance to the Mexica. Nevertheless, the city’s death and rebirth as Mexico City did not mean the end of indigenous lifeways and belief systems, which were transformed and negotiated through the violent processes of colonialism. The first Christian missionaries to arrive in Mexico built the Convent of San Francisco atop the rubble of the Totocalli. Within the convent, Fray Pedro de Gante established the School of San José de Belén de los Naturales to convert young indigenous men and train them in European artistic techniques and conventions. The school’s artists drew not only on new Renaissance models but also on their expertise in Mesoamerican artistic traditions to create innovative pieces like the famed featherwork of the Mass of St. Gregory. In some ways, one might see this as a revival of the workshops that had once existed in the Totocalli. After all, early colonial manuscripts like the Matrícula de Tributos and the Codex Mendoza attest to the longevity of tributary relations following the fall of Tenochtitlán, which illustrate Spanish efforts to harness existing Mexica imperial institutions for their new colonial ventures. It is entirely possible that these artists continued to use feathers acquired via the same routes that had brought the animals to the Totocalli. Similarly, the mayordomos employed their knowledge and practices of animal management for novel endeavors. In 1538, Mexico City—­now the seat of the viceroyalty of New Spain and a vital hub within the global Spanish Empire—­celebrated the Truce of Aigues-­Mortes, a peace treaty between Charles V and Francis I during the Habsburg-­Valois Wars in Italy. As part of the festivities, the Zócalo was transformed into an artificial forest filled with deer, rabbits, foxes, birds, “two young lions, and four small tigers.” The The Totocalli (Motecuhzoma’s “Zoo”)  79

animals were confined within wooden fences until some were released for a ritualized hunt. Díaz del Castillo praised the skill of the “native Mexican Indians” who were “so ingenious in arranging these things.” The Totocalli’s legacies also shaped practices of imperial governance and diplomatic exchange. A decade earlier, in 1528, when Cortés returned to Spain to meet with Charles V, he brought with him an entourage of representatives from Mexico. In addition to a group of noble indigenous emissaries, jugglers, and ballplayers, the party included several people with albinism or curved backs or of short stature, as well as “tigers,” birds, an opossum, and an armadillo. Through their travels to the new metropole, they became participants in the creation of a transatlantic world. Long after the Totocalli’s destruction, the animals and people who lived in the center of Tenochtitlán retain a prominent place in our visions of the Mexica past. For the Spanish chroniclers, the vivarium was simultaneously a space of familiarity and alterity through which they could make sense of a “New World.” Now, through archaeological excavations, the remains of the Totocalli and its former residents take on a new life, revealing their role as key mediators in an empire forged through ritualized ecological relations. Notes 1. Although “Moctezuma” and “Montezuma” are used more frequently, the current standard Nahuatl orthography is “Motecuhzoma.” The name’s numerous variants emerge from conflicting historical references and debates about the transliteration of indigenous languages into a Roman alphabet. 2. The Huastec people lived along the Gulf Coast, in what is today northern Veracruz and the neighboring regions. The Confederacy of Tlaxcala was a coalition of four altepemeh (plural of altepetl)—­Ocotelolco, Quiahuiztlan, Tepeticpac, and Tizatlan—­in the territory of the now eponymously named state of Tlaxcala. Texcoco, located on the eastern shores of Lake Texcoco, was one of the three constituent altepemeh of the Triple Alliance. Finally, the Purepecha State in Michoacan formed around its capital Tzintzuntzan on the shores of Lake Patzcuaro.

80  Andrés Bustamante Agudelo and Israel Elizalde Méndez

The Meaning of Maize for the Maya J. Eric Thompson

The Maya’s sacred book, the Popol Vuh, makes clear the importance of maize for their culture: it was of maize that the gods fashioned human beings, and maize has been the staff of life for the Maya ever since. Even knowing this, however, we may have some difficulty understanding precisely what maize meant—­and means—­in a vulnerable agricultural society such as that of the Maya. In the following reading, a distinguished British anthropologist reflects movingly on the Maya worldview, and how it differs from our own. Maize was a great deal more than the economic basis of Maya civilization; it was the focal point of worship, and to it every Maya who worked the soil built a shrine in his own heart. Without maize the Maya would have lacked the leisure and the prosperity to erect their pyramids and temples; without their mystical love for it, it is improbable that the peasants would have submitted to the unceasing and stupendous program of building directed by the hierarchy. The Maya laborer knew that he was building to conciliate the gods of sky and soil, on whose care and protection his maize field was dependent. Love of the soil is found among peasants the world over, but I doubt that there is a more strongly mystical attitude toward its produce than in Middle America. To the Maya, corn is peculiarly sacred. Even today, after four centuries of Christian influence, it is still spoken of with reverence and addressed ritualistically as “Your Grace.” It is the gods’ supreme gift to man, to be treated with full respect and not a little humility. Before clearing the land or sowing, the Maya fasted, practiced continence, and made his offerings to the gods of the soil. Each stage in the farming round was religious celebration. More than two hundred years ago a friar summed up the highland Maya’s attitude toward maize in these words: “Everything they did and said so concerned maize that they almost regarded it as a god. The enchantment and rapture with which they look upon their milpas is such that on their account they forget children, wife, and any other pleasure, as though the milpas were their final purpose in life and source of their felicity.” This is very much to the point, but the writer made one mistake. The Indians did regard the maize as a god, although they took good care not to let the friars know it. 81

A somewhat similar attitude is revealed by the comment of a Mam Maya from western Guatemala on the white custom of burying in niches. The Indians, he said, consider it better to feed the earth with their dead bodies in payment for the products it gives them when they are alive—­“The earth gives us food; we should feed it.” In our urban civilization the productivity of the land is something rather remote which is taken for granted. It is associated more with chain stores and can openers than with the soil, and, if our thoughts go a step back of that, we envision a man on a tractor or behind a team of horses, something picturesque, but unrelated to our efforts to earn our daily bread. The Maya, who has to struggle against climate, tropical pests, and a too exuberant vegetation, sees things in a very different light. His livelihood depends literally on the sweat of his brow, not on the steaming flanks of a pair of horses. Even now, with the benefit of crops introduced from the Old World to vary his diet, 80 percent of his food is maize. He eats it with every meal year in and year out, and so the failure of that one crop is a disaster to him. The maize seems to be fighting beside him in an unending defense against every kind of enemy, trying to survive in order that the man and his family may also live. The conception of a crop as a live being, an ally striving at our side, is utterly alien to our way of thinking, but it was and is fundamental in the Maya pattern of thought. No wonder that the Maya personified the maize and regarded it with a reverential love which we could never feel for anything inanimate. Maize is the gift which the gods could bestow on man only after considerable effort. The story is given in Maya legend: Maize was once stored beneath a great mountain of rock. It was first discovered there by the marching-­army ants, which made a tunnel to its hiding place beneath the rock and began carrying the grains away on their backs. The fox, who is always curious about his neighbors’ doings, saw the ants carrying this strange grain and tried some. Soon the other animals and then man learned of this new food, but only the ants could penetrate to the place where it was hidden. Man asked the rain gods to help them get at the store. In turn, three of the rain gods tried, but failed, to blast the rock apart with their thunderbolts. Then the chief rain god, the oldest of them all, after many refusals, was prevailed upon to try his skill. He sent the woodpecker to tap the surface of the rock to find the weakest spot. When it had been discovered, he told the woodpecker to take cover under an overhanging ledge while he tried to split the rock. With all his strength he hurled his mightiest thunderbolt against the weak point, and the rock was riven asunder. Just as the thunderbolt struck, the woodpecker, disobeying orders, stuck out his head. A flying fragment of rock hit him on the [top of his head], causing it to bleed freely, and ever since the woodpecker has had a red head. The fiery heat was so 82  J. Eric Thompson

intense that part of the maize, which had been entirely white, was charred. Some ears were slightly burned, many were discolored with smoke, but some escaped all damage. There resulted four kinds of maize—­black, red, yellow, and white. . . .

Before each task the Maya makes his offering to the gods who guard his field. Ceremonies at sowing time among the Mopan Maya of southern [Belize] will illustrate the religious setting. The night before sowing, the helpers gather at the hut of the owner of the field. At one end of the hut the sacks of seed are laid on a table before a cross, and lighted candles are placed in front and to each side of a gourd containing cacao and ground maize. The seed is then censed with copal, and afterwards the hut, inside and out, is completely censed. The men, who have brought their own hammocks, lounge in them, passing the night in conversation and music and the enjoyment of a meal served at midnight. Sometimes the group prays in the church for a good crop. The purpose of this vigil is to ensure that the crop will not be endangered by the incontinence of any member of the group (the Mam, the Chorti, the Kekchi, and other Maya groups observe periods of continence of up to thirteen days at sowing time). Looking back thirty years, I can see the group, most of them deep in shadow, for the guttering candles throw only a small circle of light. One or two are sitting in their hammocks; a third is lying back in his hammock with one foot dangling over the edge. Everyone is wrapped in a thin blanket, for the April night is cold and the chill air has no trouble in finding the spaces between the poles that form the walls of the hut. Conversation in soft, singsong Maya starts and dies like puffs of wind. Outside, the constellations of the tropics dawdle across the sky; they seem so close, one feels like raising his hand to push them on their course. Curiosity can hardly be delaying them; they have seen such vigils for many centuries. At daybreak the owner of the land goes to his field ahead of the rest of the party. There, in the center of the field, he burns copal and sows seven handfuls of maize in the form of a cross oriented to the four world directions, and recites this prayer: O god, my grandfather, my grandmother, god of the hills, god of the valleys, holy god. I make to you my offering with all my soul. Be patient with me in what I am doing, my true God and [blessed] Virgin. It is needful that you give me fine, beautiful, all I am going to sow here where I have my work, my cornfield. Watch it for me, guard it for me, let nothing happen to it from the time I sow until I harvest it. Rites of the same general type precede clearing the land and burning off the scrub when it is dry. Typical of the religious context of the agricultural year are the ceremonies to the Chacs still held in villages of Yucatán when The Meaning of Maize for the Maya  83

Religious ritual celebrated in Yaxuná, Yucatán, in 1986. The ritual is descended directly from pre-­Columbian practice. Photograph by Debra S. Walker. Used by permission of the photographer.

rain is needed. Not a man in the village fails to attend. The first task is to fetch the water needed in the preparation of the food offerings. This has to be virgin water from a sacred cenote where women never go. Once this has been brought, no one must return home, for if anyone had intercourse with a woman during the ceremony, the rains would not come. Accordingly, the men sling their hammocks within the cleared area, usually on the outskirts of the village. Following two days of preliminary ceremonies, the shaman offers at dawn of the third day thirteen tall gourds and two shallow gourds of balche [Mayan wine] to the Chacs and the guardians of the milpas. Following a chant by four assistants, the balche is distributed among the assembly, and everyone must take a little, for the balche purifies one of evil. Birds are then brought forward. Four assistants called chacs hold each bird in turn by its wings and legs while the shaman pours balche nine times down its throat and dedicates it to the rain gods. After that the birds are killed. Thirteen times balche is sprinkled on the altar, and after each sprinkling is offered to the members of the congregation. By noon the food is ready, and the main ceremony can commence. A boy is tied by his right leg to each post of the altar. These four boys represent frogs, the attendants and musicians of the rain gods. As the ceremony proceeds, they croak in imitation of frogs announcing the approach of a storm. An older man, selected to impersonate the chief Chac, is reverently carried to a cleared space a few yards east of the altar. He is provided with a calabash and a wooden knife, for . . . calabashes are carried by the Chacs and 84  J. Eric Thompson

water sprinkled from them causes rain. The wooden knife represents the implement with which they produce the lightning. From time to time this impersonator makes sounds like thunder and bran-­ dishes his wooden knife. Sometimes in place of a single impersonator of the chief Chac, four men, one at each corner of the altar, represent the four Chacs of the world directions. Each time the shaman recites a prayer or offers balche, they dance nine times around the altar. The altar is piled with food and drink. Thirteen tall gourds and two dishes of balche, nine pails of broth from the sacrificial birds, four lots each of nine piles of tortillas made of maize and squash seeds, and nine piles of various other kinds of tortillas are placed on it. After this provender has been offered to the gods (a time-­consuming ceremony), all retire so that the gods can feast on the offering without interruption. When it is judged that the gods have concluded their repast, the shaman returns and pours balche on the head of the impersonator of the chief Chac. The food, minus the spiritual essence already extracted from it, is divided among the men, and except for one or two minor ceremonies the rain petition is finished. Great stress is laid on imitative magic. The croakings of the frogs, the noises like thunder, the impersonation of the rain god with the symbols of rain and lightning are basically magic. Important, too, is the use of the sacred numbers seven, nine, and thirteen. The purification pattern runs through the ceremony: virgin water must be used, theoretically the sacrificed birds are virgin, continence is essential, and balche is a purifier. In ancient times this ceremony would probably have been not a village, but a district, rite, and children might have been offered instead of turkeys. Yet, these rites must not be regarded as so many ethnological data; they are the expressions of Maya preoccupation with the living maize and the gods who nourish him and give him drink. Much of the ancient pomp and ceremony is no more, but we can be sure that the Maya peasants, gathered in the courts of Tikal or Palenque for some ceremony, recognized with satisfaction the representations of the maize god, the Chacs, and the earth gods carved on the façades and roof combs of the temples, and were content to continue building to their glory and serving the priests who served them. They had given their hearts to the land and could have anticipated Kipling’s lines: “And Memory, Use, and Love make live us and our fields alike.”

The Meaning of Maize for the Maya  85

Omens Foretelling the Conquest Anonymous

The cultures of Mesoamerica shared a strong sense of fatalism: astrology and divination were much prized skills, a means of piercing the veil and discovering what caprices nature held in store. It is hardly surprising, then, that after the conquest people recalled the impressive omens that had foretold the event. We will, of course, never know if the following occurrences were genuine. In any case, it was clear that so momentous an episode as the European invasion could not have taken place unannounced. The omens described in the following passages are from the Florentine Codex, collected from native informants in central Mexico during the 1550s by the Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún. The first bad omen: Ten years before the Spaniards first came here, a bad omen appeared in the sky. It was like a flaming ear of corn, or a fiery signal, or the blaze of daybreak; it seemed to bleed fire, drop by drop, like a wound in the sky. It was wide at the base and narrow at the peak, and it shone in the very heart of the heavens. This is how it appeared: it shone in the eastern sky in the middle of the night. It appeared at midnight and burned till the break of day, but it vanished at the rising of the sun. The time during which it appeared to us was a full year, beginning in the year 12-­House. When it first appeared, there was great outcry and confusion. The people clapped their hands against their mouths; they were amazed and frightened, and asked themselves what it could mean. The second bad omen: The temple of Huitzilopochtli burst into flames. It is thought that no one set it afire, that it burned down of its own accord. The name of its divine site was Tlacateccan [House of Authority]. And now it is burning, the wooden columns are burning! The flames, the tongues of fire shoot out, the bursts of fire shoot up into the sky! The flames swiftly destroyed all the woodwork of the temple. When the fire was first seen, the people shouted: “Mexicanos, come running! We can put it out! Bring your water jars . . . !” But when they threw water on the blaze it only flamed higher. They could not put it out, and the temple burned to the ground. 86

Among the omens foretelling the conquest were a bird with a mirror for a head and the temple of Huitzilo­pochtli in flames. Artist unknown, ca. 1577. From Historia general de las cosas de nueva España (a.k.a. the Florentine Codex) by Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, fol. 3r, Medicea Laurenziana Library, Florence, Italy.

The third bad omen: A temple was damaged by a lightning-­bolt. This was the temple of Xiuhtecuhtli [fire god], which was built of straw, in the place known as Tzonmolco [part of the main temple of Tenochtitlán]. It was raining that day, but it was only a light rain or a drizzle, and no thunder was heard. Therefore the lightning-­bolt was taken as an omen. The people said: “The temple was struck by a blow from the sun.” The fourth bad omen: Fire streamed through the sky while the sun was still shining. It was divided into three parts. It flashed out from where the sun sets and raced straight to where the sun rises, giving off a shower of sparks like a red-­hot coal. When the people saw its long train streaming through the heavens, there was a great outcry and confusion, as if they were shaking a thousand little bells. The fifth bad omen: The wind lashed the water until it boiled. It was as if it were boiling with rage, as if it were shattering itself in its frenzy. It began from far off, rose high in the air and dashed against the walls of the houses. The flooded houses collapsed into the water. This was in the lake that is next to us. The sixth bad omen: The people heard a weeping woman night after night. She passed by in the middle of the night, wailing and crying out in a loud voice: “My children, we must flee far away from this city!” At other times she cried: “My children, where shall I take you!” 1 The seventh bad omen: A strange creature was captured in the nets. The men who fish the lakes caught a bird the color of ashes, a bird resembling a crane. They brought it to Motecuhzoma in the Black House.2 Omens Foretelling the Conquest  87

This bird wore a strange mirror in the crown of its head. The mirror was pierced in the center like a spindle whorl, and the night sky could be seen in its face. The hour was noon, but the stars and the mamalhuaztli3 could be seen in the face of that mirror. Motecuhzoma took it as a great and bad omen when he saw the stars and the mamalhuaztli. But when he looked at the mirror a second time, he saw a distant plain. People were moving across it, spread out in ranks and coming forward in great haste. They made war against each other and rode on the backs of animals resembling deer. Motecuhzoma called for his magicians and wise men and asked them: “Can you explain what I have seen? Creatures like human beings, running and fighting . . . !” But when they looked into the mirror to answer him, all had vanished away, and they saw nothing. The eighth bad omen: Monstrous beings appeared in the streets of the city: deformed men with two heads but only one body. They were taken to the Black House and shown to Motecuhzoma; but the moment he saw them, they all vanished away. Notes 1. Apparently a reference to Cihuacoatl, an ancient earth goddess, who wept and cried out in the night. She is one of the antecedents of the llorona (weeping woman), who is still heard in rural Mexico. 2. The house of magical studies. Motecuhzoma, the king, was a devoted amateur wizard. 3. Three stars in the constellation Taurus. They were extremely important in the Nahuatl religion: the Nahuas performed various ceremonies in their honor and offered them copal incense three times each night.

88  Anonymous

III Conquest and Colony

The Spaniards who arrived on the shores of Mexico in 1519 bent on glorious conquest were in fact undertaking a dangerous enterprise of dubious legality. Their leader, Hernán Cortés, had defied the orders of his sponsor, Cuban governor Diego Velázquez, and appealed directly to King Charles I of Spain (who was also Emperor Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire) for recognition as the rightful conqueror of the mainland. His surprising success in this endeavor is one of history’s greatest adventure stories. Firsthand Spanish chronicles of the conquest of Mexico continue to inspire awe, not only for their accounts of Spanish derring-­do, but also for their descriptions of the magnificent civilizations that were destroyed. Once the city-­states of the valley of Mexico were conquered, the Spaniards set their sights on subduing the other indigenous civilizations of the Americas. While Spanish accounts of these events celebrate the heroism of the conquerors, native chronicles of the same events describe the initiation of a long period of forced labor, disease, hunger, and cultural weakening. The colonial period of New Spain, while presenting an outward façade of stability most of the time, was in fact rife with hardship, rivalries, and conflict. Indigenous groups that had allied with the Spaniards, making the Conquest possible, ultimately received treatment from the conquerors that was no more humane than that which the Spanish accorded the vanquished: all became part of the reward given to the conquerors, which consisted of Indian labor and tribute, and the related possibility of encroaching on indigenous lands. While the methods for extracting Indian labor varied over time and place, the Indians often found themselves reduced to the status of dependent laborers in this new society. What’s more, they succumbed in massive numbers to disease and abuse, such that the decades following the Conquest must be reckoned as one of history’s greatest demographic holocausts. The friars who came as missionaries to convert the natives, expecting thereby to bring about the millennium of the New Testament, were the greatest defenders of indigenous peoples; and yet, in easing the harshness of the Conquest, they helped to consolidate and perpetuate it. They were also instrumental in instituting special protections for the Indians, but those protections were 89

by no means an unqualified blessing: they had the ironic effect of consolidating the Indians’ status as perpetual minors in the eyes of the colony’s rulers, which would have significant political and social consequences in the post-­ Independence era. To make matters worse, the clerics who followed that first generation of missionaries were seldom equal to the example of the pioneers: the hierarchy lived parasitically, luxuriating in baroque excess, while parish priests lived miserably from fees collected for performing the sacraments. While these same parish priests became extremely influential figures at the local level, reports were widespread of their casual disregard for the niceties of their calling. The ironies multiplied. Despite the royal government’s best efforts to maintain the “purity” of the races, race mixing was under way from the earliest days of the colony, and mestizos—­persons of mixed race—­g radually emerged as the dominant racial group. Spain’s zealous efforts in other spheres had similar unintended consequences: although the mother country tried mightily to control every aspect of colonial society and economy, it ended by losing its grip on those colonies and permitting the emergence of a powerful landowning class of creoles, or American-­born whites. Those creoles would later lead the movement for independence, but only with great reluctance and trepidation, since the exploitative system they inherited left them vulnerable to the wrath of Indians, mestizos, and blacks. As we shall see, the legacy of that system of power and privilege and the backlash it wrought would powerfully shape the course of independent Mexico. In a host of ways, then, the selections that follow underscore the thrust of much recent research on the colonial period. They suggest the numerous ways that diverse groups and actors consigned to colonial domination ended up evading or putting to their own use the institutions and norms of the imperial regime.

90  Conquest and Colony

The Spaniards’ Entry into Tenochtitlán Bernal Díaz del Castillo and Hernán Cortés

The small force of Spaniards led by Hernán Cortés arrived on the Mexican mainland in the spring of 1519. After four months on the coast, during which time Cortés and his men collected information about the Aztec capital, México-­Tenochtitlán, and fomented alliances with the Aztecs’ enemies, the band of about 450 adventurers journeyed inland. This act violated the orders given Cortés by his sponsor, Cuban governor Diego Velázquez, that Cortés should restrict his mission to fact-­finding and that under no circumstances was he to venture inland. The march to the Aztec capital took nearly three months, for it involved crossing some formidable terrain and fighting several skirmishes with hostile Indians, most notably those of the Tlaxcala region. Eventually, the Spaniards were able to convert the Tlaxcalans into staunch allies and to continue their march to Tenochtitlán. The Aztec emperor Moctezuma (whose name is rendered in a variety of spellings) tried his best to persuade the invaders to turn back, but they were determined, and toward the end of 1519 they arrived finally at the magnificent capital city of the Aztecs. Their initial impressions are recorded in the following excerpts by two of the most famous chroniclers of the conquest: Cortés himself and his lieutenant, Bernal Díaz del Castillo.

The First Sight of Tenochtitlán, as described by Díaz del Castillo We arrived at a broad Causeway, and continued our march towards Iztapalapa, and when we saw so many cities and villages built in the water and other great towns on dry land and that straight and level causeway going towards Mexico, we were amazed and said that it was like the enchantments they tell of in the legend of Amadis,1 on account of the great towers and cues [pyramids] and buildings rising from the water, and all built of masonry. And some of our soldiers even asked whether the things that we saw were not a dream? It is not to be wondered at that I here write it down in this manner, for there is so much to think over that I do not know how to describe it, seeing things as we did that had never been heard of or seen before, not even dreamed about. Thus, we arrived near Iztapalapa, to behold the splendor of the other Caciques who came out to meet us, who were the Lord of the town named 91

Cuitlahuac, and the Lord of Culuacan, both of them near relations of Mon­ tezuma. And then when we entered that city of Iztapalapa, the appearance of the palaces in which they lodged us! How spacious and well-­built they were, of beautiful stonework and cedar wood, and the wood of other sweet scented trees, with great rooms and courts, wonderful to behold, covered with awnings of cotton cloth. When we had looked well at all of this, we went to the orchard and garden, which was such a wonderful thing to see and walk in, that I was never tired of looking at the diversity of the trees, and noting the scent which each one had, and the paths full of roses and flowers, and the many fruit trees and native roses, and the pond of fresh water. There was another thing to observe, that great canoes were able to pass into the garden from the lake through an opening that had been made so that there was no need for their occupants to land. And all was cemented and very splendid with many kinds of stone [monuments] with pictures on them, which gave much to think about. Then the birds of many kinds and breeds which came into the pond. I say again that I stood looking at it and thought that never in the world would there be discovered other lands such as these, for at that time there was no Peru, nor any thought of it. [Of all these wonders that I then beheld] to-­day all is overthrown and lost, nothing left standing. Let us go on, and I will relate that the Caciques of that town and of Coyoacan brought us a present of gold, worth more than two thousand dollars, and Cortes gave them hearty thanks for it, and showed them much affection, and he told them through our interpreters things concerning our holy faith, and explained to them the great power of our Lord, the Emperor. . . . Early next day we left Iztapalapa with a large escort of those great Caciques whom I have already mentioned. We proceeded along the Causeway which is here eight paces in width and runs so straight to the City of Mexico that it does not seem to me to turn either much or little, but, broad as it is, it was so crowded with people that there was hardly room for them all, some of them going to and others returning from Mexico, besides those who had come out to see us, so that we were hardly able to pass by the crowds of them that came; and the towers and cues were full of people as well as the canoes from all parts of the lake. It was not to be wondered at, for they had never before seen horses or men such as we are. Gazing on such wonderful sights, we did not know what to say, or whether what appeared before us was real, for on one side, on the land, there were great cities, and in the lake ever so many more, and the lake itself was crowded with canoes, and in the Causeway were many bridges at intervals, and in front of us stood the great City of Mexico, and we,—­we did not even number four hundred soldiers! and we well remembered the words and warnings given us by the people of Huexotzingo and Tlaxcala and Tlamanalco, and the many other warnings that had been given that we should 92  Bernal Díaz del Castillo and Hernán Cortés

beware of entering Mexico, where they would kill us, as soon as they had us inside. Let the curious readers consider whether there is not much to ponder over in this that I am writing. What men have there been in the world who have shown such daring? But let us get on, and march along the Causeway. When we arrived where another small causeway branches off (leading to Coyoacan, which is another city) where there were some buildings like towers, which are their oratories, many more chieftains and Caciques approached clad in very rich mantles, the brilliant liveries of one chieftain differing from those of another, and the causeways were crowded with them. The Great Montezuma had sent these great Caciques in advance to receive us, and when they came before Cortes they bade us welcome in their language, and as a sign of peace, they touched their hands against the ground, and kissed the ground with the hand. There we halted for a good while, and Cacamatzin, the Lord of Texcoco, and the Lord of Iztapalapa and the Lord of Tacuba and the Lord of Coyoacan went on in advance to meet the Great Montezuma, who was approaching in a rich litter accompanied by other great Lords and Caciques, who owned vassals. When we arrived near to Mexico, where there were some other small towers, the Great Montezuma got down from his litter, and those great Caciques supported him with their arms beneath a marvelously rich canopy of green colored feathers with much gold and silver embroidery and with pearls and chalchihuites suspended from a sort of bordering, which was wonderful to look at. The Great Montezuma was richly attired according to his usage, and he was shod with sandals [cotoras], for so they call what they wear on their feet, the soles were of gold and the upper part adorned with precious stones. The four Chieftains who supported his arms were also richly clothed according to their usage, in garments which were apparently held ready for them on the road to enable them to accompany their prince, for they did not appear in such attire when they came to receive us. Besides these four Chieftains, there were four other great Caciques, who supported the canopy over their heads, and many other Lords who walked before the Great Mon­ tezuma, sweeping the ground where he would tread and spreading cloths on it, so that he should not tread on the earth. Not one of these Chieftains dared even to think of looking him in the face, but kept their eyes lowered with great reverence, except those four relations, his nephews, who supported him with their arms. When Cortes was told that the Great Montezuma was approaching, and he saw him coming, he dismounted from his horse, and when he was near Montezuma, they simultaneously paid great reverence to one another. Montezuma bade him welcome and our Cortes replied through Doña Marina wishing him very good health.2 And it seems to me that Cortes, through Doña Marina, offered him his right hand, and Montezuma did not wish to take it, but he did give his hand to Cortes and then Cortes brought out a neckThe Spaniards’ Entry into Tenochtitlán  93

lace which he had ready at hand, made of glass stones, which I have already said are called Margaritas, which have within them many patterns of diverse colors, these were strung on a cord of gold and with musk so that it should have a sweet scent, and he placed it round the neck of the Great Montezuma and when he had so placed it he was going to embrace him, and those great Princes who accompanied Montezuma held back Cortes by the arm so that he should not embrace him, for they considered it an indignity.

The Meeting with Montezuma (Mutezuma), as described by Cortés When at last I came to speak to Mutezuma himself I took off a necklace of pearls and cut glass that I was wearing and placed it round his neck; after we had walked a little way up the street a servant of his came with two necklaces, wrapped in a cloth, made from red snails’ shells, which they hold in great esteem; and from each necklace hung eight shrimps of refined gold almost a span in length. When they had been brought he turned to me and placed them about my neck, and then continued up the street in the manner already described until we reached a very large and beautiful house which had been very well prepared to accommodate us. There he took me by the hand and led me to a great room facing the courtyard through which we entered. And he bade me sit on a very rich throne, which he had had built for him and then left saying that I should wait for him. After a short while, when all those of my company had been quartered, he returned with many and various treasures of gold and silver and featherwork, and as many as five or six thousand cotton garments, all very rich and woven and embroidered in various ways. And after he had given me these things he sat on another throne which they placed there next to the one on which I was sitting, and addressed me in the following way: “For a long time we have known from the writings of our ancestors that neither I, nor any of those who dwell in this land, are natives of it, but foreigners who came from very distant parts; and likewise we know that a chieftain, of whom they were all vassals, brought our people to this region. And he returned to his native land and after many years came again, by which time all those who had remained were married to native women and had built villages and raised children. And when he wished to lead them away again they would not go nor even admit him as their chief; and so he departed. And we have always held that those who descended from him would come and conquer this land and take us as their vassals. So because of the place from which you claim to come, namely, from where the sun rises, and the things you tell us of the great lord or king who sent you here, we believe and are certain that he is our natural lord, especially as you say that he had known of us for some time. So be assured that we shall obey you and hold you as our lord in place of 94  Bernal Díaz del Castillo and Hernán Cortés

that great sovereign of whom you speak; and in this there shall be no offense or betrayal whatsoever. And in all the land that lies in my domain, you may command as you will, for you shall be obeyed; and all that we own is for you to dispose of as you choose. Thus, as you are in your own country and your own house, rest now from the hardships of your journey and the battle which you have fought, for I know full well of all that has happened to you from Pununchan to here, and I also know how those of Cempoala and Tlascalteca have told you much evil of me; believe only what you see with your eyes, for those are my enemies, and some were my vassals, and have rebelled against me at your coming and said those things to gain favor with you. I also know that they have told you the walls of my houses are made of gold, and that the floor mats in my rooms and other things in my household are likewise of gold, and that I was, and claimed to be, a god; and many other things besides. The houses as you see are of stone and lime and clay.” Then he raised his clothes and showed me his body, saying, as he grasped his arms and trunk with his hands, “See that I am of flesh and blood like you and all other men, and I am mortal and substantial. See how they have lied to you? It is true that I have some pieces of gold left to me by my ancestors; anything I might have shall be given to you whenever you ask. Now I shall go to other houses where I live, but here you shall be provided with all that you and your people require, and you shall receive no hurt, for you are in your own land and your own house.” I replied to all he said as I thought most fitting, especially in making him believe that Your Majesty was he whom they were expecting; and with this he took his leave. When he had gone we were very well provided with chickens, bread, fruit and other requisites, especially for the servicing of our quarters. In this manner I spent six days, very well provisioned with all that was needed and visited by many of those chiefs.

The Marketplace of Tenochtitlán, as described by Díaz del Castillo When we arrived at the great marketplace called Tlaltelolco, we were astounded at the number of people and the quantity of merchandise that it contained. . . . Let us begin with the dealers in gold, silver, and precious stones, feathers, mantles, and embroidered goods. Then there were other wares consisting of Indian slaves both men and women; and I say that they bring as many of them to that great market for sale as the Portuguese bring negroes from Guinea; and they brought them along tied to long poles, with collars round their necks so that they could not escape, and others they left free. Next there were other traders who sold great pieces of cloth and cotton, and articles of twisted thread, and there were cacahuateros who sold cacao. In this way one could see every sort of merchandise that is to be found in the whole The Spaniards’ Entry into Tenochtitlán  95

of New Spain, placed in arrangement in the same manner as they do in my own country, which is Medina del Campo, where they hold the fairs, where each line of booths has its particular kind of merchandise, and so it is in this great market. There were those who sold cloths of henequen and ropes and the cotaras with which they are shod, which are made from the same plant, and sweet cooked roots, and other tubers which they get from this plant, all were kept in one part of the market in the place assigned to them. In another part there were skins of tigers and lions, of otters and jackals, deer and other animals and badgers and mountain cats, some tanned and others untanned, and other classes of merchandise. Let us go on and speak of those who sold beans and sage and other vegetables and herbs in another part, and to those who sold fowls, cocks with wattles, rabbits, hares, deer, mallards, young dogs and other things of that sort in their part of the market, and let us also mention the fruiterers, and the women who sold cooked food, dough and tripe in their own part of the market; then every sort of pottery made in a thousand different forms from great water jars to little jugs, these also had a place to themselves; then those who sold honey and honey paste and other dainties like nut paste, and those who sold lumber, boards, cradles, beams, blocks and benches, each article by itself, and the vendors of ocote firewood, and other things of a similar nature. I must furthermore mention, asking your pardon, that they also sold many canoes full of human excrement, and these were kept in the creeks near the market, and this they use to make salt or for tanning skins, for without it they say that they cannot be well prepared. I know well that some gentlemen laugh at this, but I say that it is so, and I may add that on all the roads it is a usual thing to have places made of reeds or straw or grass, so that they may be screened from the passersby, into these they retire when they wish to purge their bowels so that even that filth should not be lost. But why do I waste so many words in recounting what they sell in that great market, for I shall never finish if I tell it all in detail? Paper, which in this country is called Amal, and reeds scented with liquidambar, and full of tobacco, and yellow ointments and things of that sort are sold by themselves, and much cochineal is sold under the arcades which are in that great marketplace,3 and there are many vendors of herbs and other sorts of trades. There are also buildings where three magistrates sit in judgment, and there are executive officers like Alguacils who inspect the merchandise. I am forgetting those who sell salt, and those who make the stone knives, and how they split them off the stone itself; and the fisherwomen and others who sell some small cakes made from a sort of ooze which they get out of the great lake, which curdles, and from this they make a bread having a flavor something like cheese. There are for sale axes of brass and copper and tin, and gourds and gaily painted jars made of wood. . . .

96  Bernal Díaz del Castillo and Hernán Cortés

Then we went to the great Cue, and when we were already approaching its great courts, before leaving the marketplace itself, there were many more merchants, who, as I was told, brought gold for sale in grains, just as it is taken from the mines. The gold is placed in thin quills of the geese of the country, white quills, so that the gold can be seen through, and according to the length and thickness of the quills they arrange their accounts with one another, how much so many mantles or so many gourds full of cacao were worth, or how many slaves, or whatever other thing they were exchanging. Now let us leave the great marketplace, and not look at it again, and arrive at the great courts and walls where the great Cue stands. Before reaching the great Cue there is a great enclosure of courts, it seems to me larger than the plaza of Salamanca, with two walls of masonry surrounding it and the court itself all paved with very smooth great white flagstones. And where there were not these stones it was cemented and burnished and all very clean, so that one could not find any dust or a straw in the whole place. When we arrived near the great Cue and before we had ascended a single step of it, the Great Montezuma sent down from above, where he was making his sacrifices, six priests and two chieftains to accompany our Captain. On ascending the steps, which are one hundred and fourteen in number, they attempted to take him by the arms so as to help him to ascend, (thinking that he would get tired,) as they were accustomed to assist their lord Montezuma, but Cortes would not allow them to come near him. When we got to the top of the great Cue, on a small plaza which has been made on the top where there was a space like a platform with some large stones placed on it, on which they put the poor Indians for sacrifice, there was a bulky image like a dragon and other evil figures and much blood shed that very day. When we arrived there Montezuma came out of an oratory where his cursed idols were, at the summit of the great Cue, and two priests came with him, and after paying great reverence to Cortes and to all of us he said: “You must be tired, Señor Malinche,4 from ascending this our great Cue,” and Cortes replied through our interpreters who were with us that he and his companions were never tired by anything. Then Montezuma took him by the hand and told him to look at his great city and all the other cities that were standing in the water, and the many other towns on the land round the lake, and that if he had not seen the great marketplace well, that from where they were they could see it better. So we stood looking about us, for that huge and cursed temple stood so high that from it one could see over everything very well, and we saw the three causeways which led into Mexico, that is the causeway of Iztapalapa by which we had entered four days before, and that of Tacuba, along which later on we fled on the night of our great defeat, when Cuitlahuac the new prince drove us out of the city . . . and that of Tepeaquilla, and we saw the

The Spaniards’ Entry into Tenochtitlán  97

fresh water that comes from Chapultepec which supplies the city, and we saw the bridges on the three causeways which were built at certain distances apart through which the water of the lake flowed in and out from one side to the other, and we beheld on that great lake a great multitude of canoes, some coming with supplies of food and others returning loaded with cargoes of merchandise; and we saw that from every house of that great city and of all the other cities that were built in the water it was impossible to pass from house to house, except by drawbridges which were made of wood or in canoes; and we saw in those cities Cues and oratories like towers and fortresses and all gleaming white, and it was a wonderful thing to behold; then the houses with flat roofs, and on the causeways other small towers and oratories which were like fortresses. After having examined and considered all that we had seen we turned to look at the great marketplace and the crowds of people that were in it, some buying and others selling, so that the murmur and hum of their voices and words that they used could be heard more than a league off. Some of the soldiers among us who had been in many parts of the world, in Constantinople, and all over Italy, and in Rome, said that so large a marketplace and so full of people, and so well regulated and arranged, they had never beheld before. Notes 1. The legend of Amadís of Gaul was a medieval romantic adventure story very popular among the generation of conquistadores. Eds. 2. Doña Marina, perhaps better known today as La Malinche, was an Indian woman who served the conquerors as translator. She later became Cortés’s mistress and the mother of his son, Martín. Eds. 3. Cochineal is a red dye made from the dried bodies of insects that nest in nopal cacti. Eds. 4. Although the name “Malinche” has come to be associated with Doña Marina, Cortés’s translator and mistress, it was originally the Indians’ name for Cortés himself. Since Doña Marina was always with Cortés and since it was she who actually spoke to the Indians, the Indians referred to Cortés as “Marina’s captain,” which was shortened to “Malinche.” Eds.

98  Bernal Díaz del Castillo and Hernán Cortés

Cortés and Montezuma J. H. Elliott

Like any document, the chronicles written by the conquistadores must be read with caution, since their authors were hardly objective observers. In the following excerpt, British historian John H. Elliott, an eminent authority on the relations between Spain and its New World colonies, seeks to find the truth of Cortés’s own narrative by placing the conqueror in the context of his times. There was no lack of resourcefulness in Cortés’s approach to the conquest of Mexico, which was as much a political as a military operation, and one conducted simultaneously against the Aztec emperor and the governor of Cuba. The contemporary chronicler Fernández de Oviedo refers at one point to Cortés’s capacity to “construct romances [novelar] and devise schemes appropriate to a resourceful, astute, and cunning captain.” Recent work on Cortés . . . has helped to confirm his extraordinary skill in the constructing of romances and the devising of schemes. The first letter of relation . . . is a brilliant fictional reconstruction which draws heavily on the political and juridical ideas embedded in the Siete Partidas.1 The governor, Velázquez, is painted in the darkest colors as a man consumed by greed and personal interest, whereas Cortés himself emerges as the faithful servant of the Spanish Crown and a staunch upholder of the common weal. But it is in his account of the confrontation with Montezuma that Cortés’s powers of imagination and invention are revealed at their best. Although the whole episode remains deeply mysterious, it at least seems clear that Cortés’s account of what passed between the two men should not be taken, as it has long been taken, at face value. In all probability, two distinctive layers of legend now surround the relationship between Cortés and Montezuma. The outer layer, which forms the basis of modern interpretations of the conquest of Mexico, holds that Cortés was the unwitting beneficiary of an Aztec tradition that the priest-­k ing Quetzalcoatl would one day return from out of the east and reclaim his own. No evidence has apparently been found, however, to prove the existence of any pre-­conquest tradition of Quetzalcoatl leading his followers to the land of Anáhuac. It is possible that the stories of a return from the east, like those of the omens which paralyzed Montezuma’s pow99

ers of decision, sprang up after the conquest; and the identification of Cortés with Quetzalcoatl (who is never mentioned in the writings of Cortés) may first have been made in the 1540s by the Franciscans Motolonía and Sahagún. But wrapped within this legend lies another, for which Cortés himself may have been largely responsible—­a legend similar in theme but less specific in its details. Cortés retails two speeches by Montezuma, both of them so improbable in content and tenor as to suggest that they were founded more on fantasy than facts. The two speeches are couched in tones quite alien to an Aztec but familiar enough to a Christian Spaniard; for they subtly combine the themes of the coming of a Messiah and the return of a natural lord to his vassals, in order to lead up to the grand climax of Montezuma’s renunciation of his imperial heritage into the hands of Charles V. “We give thanks to our gods,” says Montezuma, “that in our time that which was long expected has come to pass.” [Eulalia] Guzmán has shrewdly pointed out how this whole passage echoes the strains of the Nunc Dimittis.2 But the New Testament analogies do not end here. Montezuma ends his first speech of welcome with the dramatic gesture of lifting his clothes to show Cortés his body, saying: “You see that I am of flesh and bones like yourself and everyone else, mortal and tangible.” Does not this contain overtones of Jesus’s words to the disciples (“a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see me have”) and of Paul and Barnabas at Lystra (“we also are men of like passions with you”)? It is hard to avoid the impression that Cortés was drawing on all his very considerable reserves of imagination in order to paint for Charles V a solemn and spectacular picture of a scene that may never have occurred. If the scene had a faintly biblical setting, it would be all the more impressive, especially as Montezuma’s forefathers were now in the process of being endowed with distant Christian origins; and, with a nice irony, Cortés introduces his account of Tenochtitlán with words that themselves have a biblical ring: “I know that [these things] will seem so remarkable that they cannot be believed, for what we behold with our own eyes, we cannot with our understanding comprehend.” But if Cortés drew on the Bible for his general setting, and on Castilian legal codes for the ideas of suzerainty and vassalage which he put into Montezuma’s mouth, there still remains a third crucial element in the story—­the myth of the ruler returning from the east. It has been suggested that Cortés heard some such story from the Indians in the Antilles, but it seems equally possible that he heard it on his march to Mexico, and stored it up for future use. According to Bernal Díaz, two caciques at Tlaxcala told Cortés of a prophecy that men would come from the region where the sun rises and would subjugate the land. If so, the prophecy may have related not to Quetzalcoatl but to Huitzilopochtli, the god of war, who appears in the writings both of Cortés and Bernal Díaz, under the guise of “Orchilobos.” In a letter written by Don Antonio de Mendoza, the first viceroy of New Spain, to his brother, it is specifically stated that the Aztecs welcomed Cortés 100  J. H. Elliott

thinking that he was “Orchilobos”—­not Quetzalcoatl. Fernández de Oviedo, commenting on the letter, disbelieves the stories both of Orchilobos coming from the northeast, and of Cortés being mistaken for him; but this does not affect the possibility that Cortés picked up some local legend, which he then proceeded to embellish and turn to account with his customary skill. Whatever the exact origins of the myth of the returning ruler, the whole Montezuma episode, as related to Charles V, bears witness to Cortés’s remarkable fertility of invention. This creative ability, the capacity to build on a grand scale, often starting from the most slender foundations, is perhaps the most striking of all the characteristics of Cortés. It carried him through the delicate problems involved in the defiance of Velázquez; it carried him through the conquest of Mexico itself; and it inspired his approach to the work of reconstruction when the Aztec Empire had fallen. His plans for the New Spain to be established on the ruins of the old Mexico were deeply influenced by his experiences in the Antilles, where he had seen the Indian population destroyed. A repetition of the Antilles experience must at all costs be avoided, and he wrote, like the great Renaissance builder he was, of the conservation of the Indian as being “the foundation on which all this work has to be built.” But behind his schemes for the creation of an ordered society of Spaniards and Indians lay a vision which he had borrowed from the friars. It was in August 1523 that the first three Franciscan missionaries (all Flemings) arrived in Mexico, to be followed in May 1524 by the famous “twelve apostles” headed by Fray Martín de Valencia. In the fourth and fifth letters of relation, dated October 1524 and September 1526, there are clear signs of Franciscan influence on Cortés’s thought. The Franciscans, the majority of whom seem to have been less influenced by Erasmus than by Italian apocalyptic traditions and the doctrines of Savonarola,3 arrived with a burning desire to establish, in a Mexico still uncorrupted by European vices, a replica of the church of the apostles. Cortés, in the first of his letters, had emphasized the importance of informing the pope of his discoveries, so that measures could be taken for the conversion of the natives. But now, in his fourth letter, he couples his pleas for assistance in the work of conversion, with an attack on the worldliness of the church and the pomp and avarice of ecclesiastical dignitaries. His diatribe, so typical of contemporary European protests against the wealth and corruption of the church, is clearly inspired by the friars, for whom he requests exclusive rights in the conversion of Mexico. It is the Franciscans, too, who inspire the prophecy in the fifth letter that there would arise in Mexico a “new church, where God will be served and honored more than in any other region of the earth.” The Franciscans provided Cortés with an enlarged vision, not only of the new church and the new society to be built in Mexico, but also of his own special role in the providential order. He had already, in his first letter, been careful to insist that God had arranged the discovery of Mexico in order that Cortés and Montezuma  101

Queen Juana and Charles V should obtain special merit by the conversion of its pagan inhabitants. It followed from this that he himself, as the conqueror of Mexico, enjoyed a special place in the divine plan. The attitude of the Franciscans was bound to encourage him in this belief, for to them he inevitably appeared as God’s chosen agent at a vital moment in the ordering of world history—­the moment at which the sudden possibility of converting untold millions to the Faith brought the long-­awaited millennium almost within sight. It was, therefore, with the concurrence of the Franciscans that Cortés could now designate himself as the “agency” (medio) by which God had been pleased to bring the Indians to an understanding of Him. Notes 1. The Siete Partidas was a law code devised by King Alfonso X, king of Castile and León from 1252 to 1284. It was a compilation of Spanish legal knowledge of the day and is often looked to as the supreme statement of the notion of “natural law,” which sees God as the only infallible source of justice. Eds. 2. Nunc Dimittis: Luke 2:29–32: “This day, Master, thou givest thy servant his discharge in peace; now thy promise is fulfilled. For I have seen with my own eyes the deliverance which thou has made ready in full view of all the nations: a light that will be a revelation to the heathen, and glory to thy people Israel” (New English Bible). Eds. 3. Girolamo Savonarola (1452–98), Italian religious reformer. A Dominican friar, he preached heatedly against laxity in religious matters, defied Pope Alexander VI, and was hanged for heresy. Eds.

102  J. H. Elliott

The Battles of Tenochtitlán and Tlatelolco Anonymous

The events of the conquest are familiar: The Spaniards, after entering the city of Tenochtitlán, hoped to force the surrender of the city by taking the emperor Montezuma hostage. When they had kept him in captivity for several months to little profit, the tension was broken by the news that a group of Spaniards sent by Diego Velázquez, governor of Cuba, had arrived at the coast, intent on punishing Cortés for his insubordination. Cortés and part of his army left Tenochtitlán to deal with this matter; meanwhile, back in the city, forces under the command of Cortés’s lieutenant, Pedro de Alvarado, fearing a conspiracy against them, attacked their hosts during a celebration of the lords of Tenochtitlán, committing a frightful massacre. Cortés returned to find the city in an uproar, and soon the Spaniards were driven out. They sought refuge among their allies to the east of the volcanoes, and there, together with those allies, they carefully prepared for the siege of Tenochtitlán. The following excerpt, written in Nahuatl in 1528 by anonymous authors from Tenochtitlán’s neighboring, allied city-­state of Tlatelolco, describes the valiant, doomed resistance of the Aztecs and their allies during the final siege and subjugation of the city. Now the Spaniards began to wage war against us. They attacked us by land for ten days, and then their ships appeared. Twenty days later, they gathered all their ships together near Nonohualco, off the place called Mazatzintamalco. The allies from Tlaxcala and Huexotzinco set up camp on either side of the road. Our warriors from Tlatelolco immediately leaped into their canoes and set out for Mazatzintamalco and the Nonohualco road. But no one set out from Tenochtitlan to assist us: only the Tlatelolcas were ready when the Spaniards arrived in their ships.1 On the following day, the ships sailed to Xoloco. The fighting at Xoloco and Huitzillan lasted for two days. While the battle was under way, the warriors from Tenochtitlan began to mutiny. They said: “Where are our chiefs? They have fired scarcely a single arrow! Do they think they have fought like men?” Then they seized four of their own leaders and put them to death. The victims were two captains, Cuauhnochtli and

103

Cuapan, and the priests of Amantlan and Tlalocan. This was the second time that the people of Tenochtitlan killed their own leaders.

The Spaniards set up two cannons in the middle of the road and aimed them at the city. When they fired them, one of the shots struck the Eagle Gate. The people of the city were so terrified that they began to flee to Tlatelolco. They brought their idol Huitzilopochtli with them, setting it up in the House of the Young Men. Their king Cuauhtemoc also abandoned Tenochtitlan. Their chiefs said: “Mexicanos! Tlatelolcas! All is not lost! We can still defend our houses. We can prevent them from capturing our storehouses and the produce of our lands. We can save the sustenance of life, our stores of corn. We can also save our weapons and insignia, our clusters of rich feathers, our gold earrings and precious stones. Do not be discouraged; do not lose heart. We are Mexicanos! We are Tlatelolcas!” . . . The captains from Tenochtitlan cut their hair short, and so did those of lesser rank. The Otomies and the other ranks that usually wore headdresses did not wear them during all the time we were fighting. The Tlatelolcas surrounded the most important captains and their women taunted them: “Why are you hanging back? Have you no shame? No woman will ever paint her face for you again!” The wives of the men from Tenochtitlan wept and begged for pity. When the warriors of Tlatelolco heard what was happening, they began to shout, but still the brave captains of Tenochtitlan hung back. As for the Tlatelolcas, their humblest warriors died fighting as bravely as their captains.

A Spaniard named Castañeda approached us in Yauhtenco. He was accompanied by a group of Tlaxcaltecas, who shouted at the guards on the watchtower near the breakwater. These guards were Itzpalanqui, the captain of Chapul­ tepec; two captains from Tlapala; and Cuexacaltzin. Castañeda shouted to them: “Come here!” “What do you want?” they asked him. “We will come closer.” They got into a boat and approached to within speaking distance. “Now, what have you to say to us?” The Tlaxcaltecas asked: “Where are you from?” And when they learned that the guards were from Tlatelolco, they said: “Good, you are the men we are looking for. Come with us. The ‘god’ has sent for you.” The guards went with Castañeda to Nonohualco. The Captain [Cortés] was in the House of the Mist there, along with La Malinche [Doña Marina], The Sun [Alvarado] and Sandoval. A number of the native lords were also present and they told the Captain: “The Tlatelolcas have arrived. We sent for them to come here.” 104  Anonymous

La Malinche said to the guards: “Come forward! The Captain wants to know: What can the chiefs of Tenochtitlan be thinking of? Is Cuauhtemoc a stupid, willful little boy? Has he no mercy on the women and children of his city? Must even the old men perish? See, the kings of Tlaxcala, Huexotzinco, Cholula, Chalco, Acolhuacan, Cuauhnahuac, Xochimilco, Mizquic, Cuitlahuac and Culhuacan are all here with me.” One of the kings said: “Do the people of Tenochtitlan think they are playing a game? Already their hearts are grieving for the city in which they were born. If they will not surrender, we should abandon them and let them perish by themselves. Why should the Tlatelolcas feel sorry when the people of Tenochtitlan bring a senseless destruction on themselves?” The guards from Tlatelolco said: “Our lords, it may be as you say.” The “god” said: “Tell Cuauhtemoc that the other kings have all abandoned him. I will go to Teocalhueyacan, where his forces are gathered, and I will send the ships to Coyoacan.” The guards returned to speak with the followers of Cuauhtemoc. They shouted the message to them from their boats. But the Tlatelolcas would not abandon the people of Tenochtitlan.

The Spaniards made ready to attack us, and the war broke out again. They assembled their forces in Cuepopan and Cozcacuahco. A vast number of our warriors were killed by their metal darts. Their ships sailed to Texopan,

The Battle of Tenochtitlán as envisioned by an anonymous seventeenth-­century Spanish artist. From the Jay I. Kislak Collection, Rare Book and Special Collections, the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

The Battles of Tenochtitlán and Tlatelolco  105

and the battle there lasted three days. When they had forced us to retreat, they entered the Sacred Patio, where there was a four-­day battle. Then they reached Yacacolco. The Tlatelolcas set up three racks of heads in three different places. The first rack was in the Sacred Patio of Tlilancalco [Black House], where we strung up the heads of our lords the Spaniards. The second was in Acacolco, where we strung up Spanish heads and the heads of two of their horses. The third was in Zacatla, in front of the temple of the earth-­goddess Cihuacoatl, where we strung up the heads of Tlaxcaltecas. The women of Tlatelolco joined in the fighting. They struck at the enemy and shot arrows at them; they tucked up their skirts and dressed in the regalia of war. The Spaniards forced us to retreat. Then they occupied the market place. The Tlatelolcas—­the Jaguar Knights, the Eagle Knights, the great warriors—­ were defeated, and this was the end of the battle. It had lasted five days, and two thousand Tlatelolcas were killed in action. During the battle, the Spaniards set up a canopy for the Captain in the market place. They also mounted a catapult on the temple platform.

And all these misfortunes befell us. We saw them and wondered at them; we suffered this unhappy fate. Broken spears lie in the roads; we have torn our hair in our grief. The houses are roofless now, and their walls are red with blood. Worms are swarming in the streets and plazas, and the walls are splattered with gore. The water has turned red, as if it were dyed, and when we drink it, it has the taste of brine. We have pounded our hands in despair against the adobe walls, for our inheritance, our city, is lost and dead. The shields of our warriors were its defense, but they could not save it. We have chewed dry twigs and salt grasses; we have filled our mouths with dust and bits of adobe; we have eaten lizards, rats and worms. . . . When we had meat, we ate it almost raw. It was scarcely on the fire before we snatched it and gobbled it down. 106  Anonymous

They set a price on all of us: on the young men, the priests, the boys and girls. The price of a poor man was only two handfuls of corn, or ten cakes made from mosses or twenty cakes of salty couch-­g rass. Gold, jade, rich cloths, quetzal feathers—­everything that once was precious was now considered worthless. Note 1. During the sojourn in Tlaxcala, Cortés ordered that thirteen small ships be built to maneuver on Lake Texcoco and aid in the siege of Tenochtitlán. Eds.

The Battles of Tenochtitlán and Tlatelolco  107

The Spiritual Conquest Fray Jerónimo de Mendieta

No account of the conquest would be complete without some consideration of the key role played by the first Christian missionaries. Cortés, as J.  H. Elliott points out, was a pious man who fancied himself “God’s chosen agent” in the evangelization of the New World. He was also a practical man who had witnessed the destruction of the Indian populations of the Caribbean islands. Both from religious conviction and a determination that the experience of the islands not be repeated on the mainland, he specifically requested that a group of Franciscan monks be sent from Spain to protect and evangelize the Indians. The Franciscans, who were heavily influenced by Erasmus’s writings and other currents in Renaissance humanism, emphasized poverty and humility in all their works, and this attitude seems to have aided them in winning over a substantial portion of the Indian population. They went about their task of evangelization with remarkable zeal and determination, although the Church and its clergy were by no means always humble and righteous in their dealings with Indians. The following selection seeks to claim for the friars their fair share of the credit for securing Spanish domination of New Spain. It was written by Jerónimo de Mendieta, a Franciscan monk who arrived in New Spain in 1554. Although he was not an eyewitness to the events he describes, he is regarded as one of the most reliable historians of this early period of evangelization, for he was well acquainted with members of the original “Twelve,” as well as with many other participants and witnesses. He was also able to utilize the writings of the earliest missionaries, as well as the archives of the convent of San Francisco in Mexico City. Mendieta wrote his classic account, Historia eclesiástica indiana, between 1571 and 1596.

On the devotion and reverence with which the governor, Fernando Cortés, received the twelve friars When the governor, Fernando Cortés,1 heard of the arrival of the friars he had sent for, he was greatly pleased; and rejoicing in his soul, he gave thanks to Our Lord for this blessing. He then ordered some of his servants to go out and greet them in his name, and to look after them, so that they should 108

lack nothing and so that no misfortune should befall them, for things in that land were not yet quite stable and settled, it having been won by only a few Spaniards who were at that time all gathered in Mexico City and fearing some mishap. . . . While these friars, eschewing all comfort, walked barefoot to Mexico, which is sixty leagues from the port where they disembarked, the governor ordered that all of the principal Indian caciques from the largest villages around Mexico be called before him, so that they would all be together to receive the ministers of God who came to teach them His law and show them His will, and to guide them along the path to their salvation. When these servants of God passed through Tlaxcala, they stopped for a day to rest from their journey and to see that renowned and populous city, and they awaited the market day when most of the people of that province would come together to buy provisions for their families. The friars marveled at seeing such a multitude of souls, more than they had ever in their lives seen gathered together. They praised God with the greatest joy at seeing the bounteous harvest He had placed before them. And since they could not speak to the Indians, for they lacked knowledge of their language, they spoke like mutes, using signs to indicate heaven, hoping to make them understand that they had come to show them the treasures and glories that were up there. The Indians walked behind them, just as children will follow someone who brings them some novelty, and they marveled to see the friars wearing such ragged clothing, so different from the elegance and ostentation they had seen in the Spanish soldiers. They said to one another: “Who are these men who are so poor? What sort of clothing are they wearing? They are not like the other Christians of Castile.” And they kept repeating a word of theirs, saying, “motolinea, motolinea.” One of the fathers, whose name was Toribio de Benavente, asked a Spaniard what this word meant that the Indians kept repeating. The Spaniard answered: “Padre, motolinea means ‘poor,’ or ‘poverty.’ ” And from that time forward, Fray Toribio always called himself “Fray Toribio Motolinea.” When they got to Mexico, the governor, accompanied by the Spanish gentlemen and Indian nobles who had been gathered for the occasion, went forth to receive them. And kneeling on the ground, one by one the governor kissed each of their hands. Pedro de Alvarado did likewise, as did all of the Spanish captains and gentlemen. Upon seeing this, the Indians followed suit, and in imitation of the Spaniards they too kissed the friars’ hands. Such is the power of the example of one’s superiors. This most memorable act is now commemorated in many paintings throughout New Spain, for it was the best thing that Cortés ever did. He acted not as a mere man, but as an angelic and heavenly being, and through him the Holy Spirit built a firm foundation for the preaching of the divine word. So it was that, through men who appeared poor and lowly in the eyes of the world, as well as through others just as poor, broken and despised, the The Spiritual Conquest  109

word was introduced into this new world, and broadcast among those infidels who were present, and thence to the innumerable villages and peoples at their command. And certainly this deed of Cortés is the best thing he ever did, for in the rest of his deeds he conquered others, but in this he conquered his own self. Such a conquest, according to the words of all the saints and wise men, is stronger, more powerful, and more difficult to achieve than any other in the world. For what other man, finding himself at such a high summit, lord of a New World, feared and respected by that world’s greatest lords, regarded by them as another god Jupiter, would lower and humble himself to the point of kneeling before some poor and ragged men, who to the world seemed worthy of scorn, and kissing their hands? Truly this was the act of a man who was very Catholic at heart, who understood well the honor due to priests, unworthy though they may have appeared, for they are the ministers of God on earth, his vicars and delegates. Such respect was not observed in other parts of the world, and there the faith has been allowed to collapse and fall into countless errors. And if this honor is due to all of the priests of Christ everywhere, it is especially due in those places which are new to the faith, where tender shoots attentively note how the old Christians deal with the priests, and if the old Christians give the priests the honor that their dignity warrants, then those new to the faith will be guided by their example. Then the governor, having greeted his new guests with such great humility, turned to the caciques and Indian nobles, who were stunned and astonished at seeing the extraordinary act just described, and said to them: “Do not marvel at what you have seen, that the captain-­general, governor and delegate of the Emperor of the world should show obedience and subjugation to these men who arrived from Spain poor and in rags. For we have dominion and may govern all those under our command—­a lthough it be true that everything comes from the supreme God—­because the Emperor, who is the greatest Lord in this world, grants us such power. But this power is limited, it extends no farther than the bodies and goods of men, and to that which is visible and tangible, and which in this world is perishable and subject to corruption. But these men, though they be poor, have power over immortal souls, each and every one of which is of greater value and esteem than anything of the world, including gold and silver and precious stones, and even the sky over our heads. Because God grants them the power to guide to heaven the souls of all who seek their aid, and there they shall enjoy everlasting glory. Those who do not seek their aid will be lost and will go to hell to suffer eternal torment, like that which is now suffered by your ancestors who did not have ministers like these to instruct them in the knowledge of the God who created us, and whose knowledge we must keep so that we will come to reign with him in heaven. And in order that a like fate should not befall you, and that you should not, out of ignorance, go to the same place where your fathers and grandfathers have gone, these priests of God, whom 110  Fray Jerónimo de Mendieta

you call teopixques, have come to show you the way to salvation. Hold them, therefore, in the highest esteem and reverence, for they are guides for your souls, the messengers of the most high Lord, and your spiritual fathers. Hear their doctrine and obey their counsels and commands, and see that all others attend and obey them, for this is my will and that of our lord and Emperor, as well as the will of God Himself, Whom we live for and serve, and Who sent us to this land.”

On how the Religious, with the help of their disciples, destroyed the temples of the idols Although on the one hand these servants of God were heartily content at seeing how the people attended their sermons and listened to their doctrine, on the other hand they suspected that the Indians might be attending church merely to comply superficially with the orders given them by their nobles in order to deceive the friars, and that this might not be a sincere movement by the people to seek the remedy for their souls by renouncing the worship of the idols. And the friars persuaded themselves that this was indeed the case, for they were told that, while in public the Indians no longer made their old sacrifices, which usually involved the killing of men, in the secret spaces of the hills and in fearful, remote places, and at night in the temples of the demons which were still standing, they continued to make their sacrifices, and in the temples they performed their old ceremonies, chants, and drunken celebrations. Seeing this, the friars wrote to the governor Don Fernando Cortés, who at that time had left for Las Higueras,2 asking him to give rigorous orders that the sacrifices and services of the demons be stopped, because as long as they went on, the preaching of the ministers of the church would be in vain. The governor very swiftly did as they asked. But the secular Spaniards, who had to execute the punishments and search out the delinquents, and who were occupied in building their houses and in taking their tribute from the Indians, were satisfied as long as no one committed a public homicide before their eyes; as to the rest, they cared nothing about it. So business went on as usual, and the idolatry continued; and yet the friars saw that time was being lost and work being done in vain so long as the temples of the idols were standing. Because it was clear that the ministers of the demons had to go there to exercise their offices, and to convoke and preach to the people, and to make their accustomed ceremonies. And attentive to this, the friars agreed to begin destroying the temples, and not to stop until they were all burned to the ground, and the idols likewise destroyed and eradicated, even though in doing this they would place themselves in mortal danger. They carried out their plan, beginning in Texcuco, where there were very beau­tiful temples with fine towers, and this was in the year 1525, the first day of the year. And then they destroyed the temples of Mexico, Tlaxcala, and The Spiritual Conquest  111

­ uexozingo. The friars took with them the children and young men they G had raised and instructed, the sons of the Indian lords and nobles .  .  . and they also received help from the common people who were already converted and wanted to prove that they were confirmed in the faith. And this they ordered done at a time when those who might have opposed them were distracted by other things. And since in most cases they used fire, which burned rapidly, there could be no resistance. And so fell the walls of Jericho, with voices of praise and shouts of joy from the faithful children, while those who remained outside the faith were frightened and stupefied, and the wings of their hearts (as they say) were broken at seeing their temples and gods brought down. Regarding this heroic exploit, some wished to argue with the friars by saying, first, that it was a rash deed, for it might anger and incite the Indians who might kill them; and second, that they could not in good conscience do such damage to the buildings they destroyed, and to the clothing and finery and things that decorated the idols and the temples that now burned and were lost. To which the friars responded with many good reasons that we will make clear in the following section.

On the great benefit that followed upon the destruction of the principal temples and idols, in both the spiritual and temporal realms The account I heard regarding the blame that some placed upon the friars in this case seems to suggest that those who muttered and opposed them were moved by envy, for the friars had taken charge of the destruction of idolatry, they had undertaken this dangerous task without asking for help. . . . Since the secular Spaniards had arrived with Captain Don Fernando Cortés, .  .  . they judged themselves to be conquerors in the spiritual as well as in the temporal realm, and they did not want others to take from them the honor and glory of which they boasted. .  .  . I believe, however, that the secular Spaniards were moved to censure the work of the friars mostly out of fear that the Indians would rise up against them. For since they were few and the governor was absent, they feared they might all be killed. This fear endured for many years among the secular Spaniards. The friars, however, were not afraid, first because they were not afraid of dying for the love of God, and second because they knew the quality and condition of the Indians, who, if they sensed fear or cowardice in those with whom they had dealings, would take heart and grow bold. If, on the other hand, they saw valor and fortitude in their adversaries, then they would lose their spirit and turn cowardly, as the friars learned from experience. At this very time, the Indians were conspiring to rise up against the Spaniards; they wished to offer new sacrifices to the idols, demanding that their gods favor them against the Christians, whom they held in low regard since they were few and poorly adjusted, and they issued proclamations about who would lead the Indians in their efforts 112  Fray Jerónimo de Mendieta

to get the better of the Spaniards. Cortés (whom they feared and respected) was not present in the land. But seeing how the friars, with such daring and determination, set fire to the Indians’ principal temples, and destroyed the idols they contained, and seeing that this was immediately preceded by the governor’s rigorous command that no further sacrifices be made to the demons, it seemed to the Indians that this order was not unfounded, that the governor would return shortly, or perhaps more people were on their way from Castile. And the Indians ceased their plotting, for they saw that the Spaniards did not fear them. If before they were of a mind to rebel, it was because they felt the Spaniards were frightened; for some twenty or thirty days the city of Mexico was guarded closely, its inhabitants in such fear they dared not travel even amid the thunder of horses’ hooves, but they watched and waited, not even daring to leave Mexico City. . . . But then the infidels, seeing their principal temples laid waste, lost heart in the performance of their idolatry, and from that time forward the way was opened to demolish what remained of idolatry. Now the many, the conquered, did not even try to resist when the friars went themselves, or sent their disciples, to search for and confiscate idols, and to destroy the few temples that remained. Indeed, these acts inspired in them such timidity and fear that a friar could simply send some children with rosary beads or some other sign, and those children, upon finding idolatry or witchcraft or drunkenness, would say that the fathers sent them to make them stop doing such things. And this incredible subjection and respect accorded to the religious was essential to the fulfillment of their Christian mission.

On the two things for which the conquistadores and other Spaniards are greatly indebted to the religious of the Order of San Francisco In view of the material offered in the last section, and because it is right to acknowledge and express gratitude for men’s good works, I would like here to mention two things for which the Spaniards of New Spain are particularly obliged to the friars of San Francisco, and therefore have reason to show their thanks. The first is a matter we have just touched upon, although we did not declare it so boldly as we do now: the conservation of this land, and the fact that it was not lost once won, is due to the friars of San Francisco, just as much as the initial conquest was the work of Don Fernando Cortés and his companions. I will not address the issue of whether this was just or unjust, licit or illicit. Rather, I will discuss the similarity of one conquest to the other insofar as thanks are due. I dare affirm this truth by citing the authority of Father Toribio Motolinea, one of the twelve, who was a participant and eyewitness. He was my guardian and I knew him always to be a holy man, a man who would never say anything other than the plain truth. In those early days, he said, there were very few Spaniards in Mexico, barely two hundred The Spiritual Conquest  113

.  .  . and the Spaniards had ill feelings toward one another, owing to dark ambition and greed, and they would not consider the manifest danger they were in, being surrounded by millions of Indians who resented the Spaniards for having forcibly enslaved them. When they were advised by the friars of this apparent fact, they became quite afraid. Yet despite all of this, they were so impassioned and blind that they took up arms; and they were so headstrong that none among them sought peace, or intervened in their disputes, or placed themselves in front of their swords, lances, and artillery, except for the friars. Our Lord granted these men the grace to bring peace. Had it not been for them, the Spaniards would have continued in their blindness and begun to kill each other, and then the Indians would have come along to finish them all off, for they were waiting for just that opportunity. This venerable father [Motolinea] affirms that, although the lords and nobles of these kingdoms had, in their infidelity, always been enemies of one another and making war among themselves, at this time they were very much united and allied, and fully prepared to make war. But the Indians whom the friars had nurtured warned them of what was happening, and using whatever means they thought best they managed to detain and obstruct the intentions of the nobles and to warn the Spaniards. . . . As for my second proposition, it is not necessary to find witnesses, for it is the best-­k nown thing in all the world: had there been no friars (who ceaselessly implored our Catholic kings, the Emperor and his son), there would have been no people in the world poorer and more miserable than the Spaniards who lived in New Spain, once the Indians had been finished off. And they would have had no Indians were it not for the tenacity of the friars in defending those Indians: otherwise, how many years would it have been before all of the Indians died, just like the Indians of the islands had done? Who can doubt this? Yet instead of thanking the friars for this, the Spaniards have always borne ill will toward them, complaining and muttering among themselves that the friars were taking away their slaves and would not allow them to use the Indians as they saw fit. What they wanted was to help themselves to the Indians in such a way that would have promptly annihilated them, for they took account of nothing but the present moment. One can clearly see, then, that the friars have been the cause of the conservation of the Indians wherever they have been. Because it is only in those places where they have had charge of indoctrination that there are Indians in large numbers; elsewhere, they have all been consumed by forced servitude. We have examples of this in Nicaragua and Honduras, and on the southern and northern coasts, where for many years there have been practically no people, since they did not have the religious to protect them.

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Notes 1. Cortés’s first name is variously rendered as “Hernán,” “Hernando,” or “Fernando.” Eds. 2. In 1522, shortly after the conquest of Tenochtitlán, Cortés dispatched an expedition under the leadership of Cristóbal de Olid with orders to establish a Spanish settlement at Las Higueras, in the north of Honduras. Olid followed Cortés’s own example and disavowed the authority of his patron, whereupon Cortés fitted up an elaborate expedition to punish the renegade. He was away from Mexico City for a full two years on this disastrous adventure. Eds.

The Spiritual Conquest  115

Why the Indians Are Dying Alonso de Zorita

For all the purported good intentions of Cortés and the early friars to avoid a demographic catastrophe like that which had plagued the Caribbean islands, the early decades of Spanish colonization in the Americas proved to be one of history’s greatest holocausts. In central Mexico, according to one estimate, the indigenous population declined by about 85 percent in the century after the military conquest. While it is generally agreed that the main cause of this decline was epidemics of Old World diseases to which the Indians had little immunity, it must also be recognized that the harsh system of tribute and labor extraction devised by the conquistadores and early settlers also played a significant, interactive role. Apart from the more egregious cases of exploitation, overworked and undernourished bodies were even more susceptible to the vectors of European disease. Early on, the Spanish Crown had ruled decisively that Indians could not be enslaved. Nevertheless, persistent demands by conquerors and settlers that they be rewarded for their efforts led to the system of encomienda, royal grants under which groups of Indians were obliged to provide tribute and labor to a Spanish trustee, or encomendero, who was supposed to be responsible for their spiritual conversion and welfare. As abuses of the system mounted, the Crown, both to stem the assault on the Indian community and to avert the threat of an autonomous American nobility, issued a series of laws and decrees that aimed to do away with the encomienda. Despite some success in this endeavor, exploitation of Indian labor became an enduring feature of colonial society. Alonso de Zorita (ca. 1511–85) was trained as a lawyer. He first came to the Americas in 1548 to take up a position on the Audiencia (the High Court and governing board) of Española, the Caribbean island where Columbus had established the first American settlement but which had since seen the near extinction of its native population. From his first days in the colonies, he angered the Spanish settlers with his denunciations of their cruelty to the Indians. In 1556 he was made an oidor [judge] of the Audiencia of New Spain, the most important in the colonies. Zorita would spend the next ten years in Mexico, a decade during which the Spanish Crown accelerated its efforts to wrest power from the encomenderos. After returning to Spain in 1566, he commenced work on his Brief and Summary Relation of the Lords of New Spain, which he completed in 1585. Clearly, Zorita exaggerates the joys of the Indians’ 116

pre-­conquest life, and he badly overstates their supposed submissiveness and docility. Like his predecessor, the great defender of the Indians Bartolomé de Las Casas, Zorita likely reckoned that the threat to the Indian population was sufficiently grave and immediate to demand a strategy of exaggerated and overwrought rhetoric. In the old days [the Indians] performed their communal labor in their own towns. Their labor was lighter, and they were well treated. They did not have to leave their homes and families, and they ate food they were accustomed to eat and at the usual hours. They did their work together and with much merriment, for they are people who do little work alone, but together they accomplish something. . . . The building of the temples and houses of the lords [principales] and public works was always a common undertaking, and many people worked together with much merriment. They left their houses after the morning chill had passed, and after they had eaten what sufficed them, according to their habits and means. Each worked a little and did what he could, and no one hurried or mistreated him for it. They stopped work early, before the chill of the afternoon, both winter and summer, for they all went about naked or with so few clothes it was like wearing none. At the slightest rainfall they took cover, because they tremble with cold when the first drops fall. Thus they went about their work, cheerfully and harmoniously. They returned to their houses, which, being very small, were cozy and took the place of clothing. Their wives had a fire ready and laid out food; and they took pleasure in the company of their wives and children. There was never any question of payment for this communal labor. In this same way, with much rejoicing and merriment and without undue exertion, they built the churches and monasteries of their towns. These are not as sumptuous as some have said, but accord with what is necessary and proper, with moderation in everything. . . . Neither drunkenness nor their well-­organized communal labor is killing [the Indians] off. The cause is their labor on Spanish public works and their personal service to the Spaniards, which they fulfill in a manner contrary to their own ways and tempo of work. To make this clear, I shall relate some things that have been and are being done to the Indians. . . . What has destroyed and continues to destroy the Indians is their forced labor in the construction of large stone masonry buildings in the Spaniards’ towns. For this they are forced to leave their native climates, to come from tierra fría to tierra caliente, and vice versa, 20, 30, 40, and more leagues away. Their whole tempo of life, the time and mode of work, of eating and sleeping, are disrupted. They are forced to work many days and weeks, from dawn until after dusk, without any rest. Once I saw, after the hour of vespers, a great number of Indians hauling a long heavy beam to a construction site owned by a very prominent Why the Indians Are Dying  117

man. When they stopped to rest, a Negro overseer went down the line with a leather strap in hand, whipping them all from first to last to hurry them on and keep them from resting; he did this not to gain time for some other work, for the day was over, but simply to keep up the universal evil habit of mistreating the Indians. Since the Negro struck with force and they were naked, with only their genitals covered, the lashes must have caused them cruel pain; but no one spoke or turned his head, for they are ever long-­suffering and submissive. It is a routine thing to drive them, to work them without letting them pause for breath, and to harass them in every possible way. . . . They have been destroyed by the great and excessive tribute they have had to pay, for in their great fear of the Spaniards they have given all they had. Since the tribute was excessive and continually demanded, to make payment they sold their land at a low price, and their children as slaves. When they had nothing left with which to pay, many died for this in prison; if they managed to get out, they emerged in such sorry state that they died in a few days. Others died from being tortured to tell where there was gold or where they had hidden it. They have been treated bestially and unreasonably in all respects. Their numbers have also been diminished by their enslavement for work in the mines and in the personal service of the Spaniards. In the first years there was such haste to make slaves that they poured into Mexico City from all directions, and throughout the Indies they were taken in flocks like sheep to be branded. The Spaniards pressed the Indian lords to bring in all the slaves, and such was the Indians’ fear that to satisfy the Spaniards they brought their own vassals and even their own children when they had no others to offer. Much the same thing happens today in the provision of Indians on the pretext that they had risen in rebellion, contrary to Your Majesty’s orders. They have been reduced by the thousands by their toil in the gold and silver mines; and on the journey to the mines 80 or 100 leagues away they were loaded with heavy burdens to which they were not accustomed. They died in the mines or along the road, of hunger and cold or extreme heat, and from carrying enormous loads of implements for the mines or other extremely heavy things; for the Spaniards, not satisfied with taking them so far away to work, must load them down on the way. Although the Indians brought some food from home, the amount was scanty, for they had no more; and it ran out on their arrival at the mines or on the return journey home. Countless numbers died, and many fled to the woods, abandoning their homes, wives, and children, and thus the towns on the way to the mines or around them became depopulated. The Spaniards still compel the Indians to go to the mines on the pretext that they are being sent to construct buildings there and are going voluntarily; these Spaniards claim that Your Majesty does not prohibit such labor, but only forbids work in the mines. In actual fact the In-

118  Alonso de Zorita

dians never go voluntarily, for they are forced to go under the repartimiento system1 by order of the Audiencia, contrary to Your Majesty’s orders. . . . The Indians have also been laid low by the labor of making sheep, cattle, and pig farms, of fencing these farms, of putting up farm buildings, and by their labor on roads, bridges, watercourses, stone walls, and sugar mills. For this labor, in which they were occupied for many days and weeks, they were taken away from their homes, their accustomed tempo of work and mode of life were disrupted; and on top of everything else they had to supply the materials for these projects at their own cost and bring them on their own backs without receiving any pay or even food. Now they are paid, but so little that they cannot buy enough to eat, for they are still used for such labor with permission from the Audiencias. . . . They have [also] been destroyed by the household service they have had to give to the Spaniards. They still give this service in some places, or are hired out to the mines. Those whose turn it was to serve a week and provide the Spaniards with food and fuel sometimes had to start out two weeks beforehand; thus in order to serve one week they must spend four weeks in coming and going. The roads were filled with Indian men and women, exhausted, dying of hunger, weary and afflicted; and the roads were strewn with the bodies of men, women, and even their little ones, for they used them to carry food—­something these people had never before done. Yet another multitude has been killed off and continues to be killed off by being taken as carriers on conquests and expeditions, and still others to serve the soldiers. They were taken from their homes by force and separated from their women and children and kin, and few if any returned, for they perished in the conquests or along the roads, or died on their return home. . . . Needless to say, they were taken in collar chains, and mistreated along the way; and when an Indian, man or woman, was worn out from the burden he was carrying, the Spaniards cut off his head so as not to have to stop to unchain him, and his load was distributed among the rest. Yet another multitude perished in the seaports building ships for the Marqués [Cortés] to send to California and the Spice Islands. By the thousands they were made to carry provisions, materials, and rigging on very long journeys of 40, 50, and more leagues. They trudged through forests and mountains and over wretched roads, crossing rivers and marshes far from their native lands, without food, clothing, or shelter. Wherever they went the alcaldes mayores and corregidores, and their lieutenants and alguaciles, worked them unmercifully, and fined them, and took their food and whatever else they pleased. These officials also took part of the supplies the Indians had gathered for the ships, so the Indians’ work was never done. For when they had brought what was required of them, a Spanish judge would take what he pleased for his own trafficking, and order them to gather more for the ships.

Why the Indians Are Dying  119

Then there was the dike that was built in Mexico City,2 and the fencing of a large part of the Valley of Toluca to protect the Spaniards’ cattle, from which the Indians suffered incalculable damage. The dike, several Spaniards told me, was of no use whatever. All the people of the land were summoned, and they came from 30 and 40 leagues away. It was built at the Indians’ expense, although it meant nothing to them even if it had been of use. It is always thus, for it is not enough that they give their labor and provide their own food; they must also bring and pay for all the materials for these public works. It was an incalculable waste of people as well as of their pitifully small means. They provided the earth, the stone, the stakes; thus they contributed both the labor and the materials though they received no benefit from this dike, whose cost has been estimated at 300,000 ducats. It is said the numbers of laborers and masons occupied in this work was well over two million. Since the causeway is very long, the work took about four months, and each day a very great number of people were engaged in it. They worked hard all day in the water, mud, and cold, having no shelter by day or night. As a result, at the end of the week they returned home exhausted and fell ill from their ordeal. Countless numbers died. . . . These are the things that have worn down the people of this land. They have resulted in disrupting their way of life, their routine of work, diet, and shelter, and in taking them from their towns and homes, their wives and children, their repose and harmony. I believe that their excessive labor, their exposure to hunger, cold, heat, and wind, their sleeping on the ground in the open, in the cold and the night dew, are the cause of their plague of cámaras [a disease characterized by diarrhea]. There is no cure or relief for the disease, and they die on the fourth or fifth day. Death brings an end to their suffering, from which they are never free as long as they are alive. I could mention other things that are causing the extinction of these wretched people, but the great increase in the number of farms owned by Spaniards is in itself a sufficient cause. Then, fifteen and twenty years ago, there were fewer farms, and there were many more Indians. The Indians were forced to work on them and suffered hardships therefrom, but since they were many and the farms few, it was not so noticeable. Now the Spanish farms are many and large and the Indians very few, and they must clear, cultivate, and weed as well as harvest and store the crops, so that all this labor now falls on the few that remain. There are ten times more Spaniards and Spanish farms and estates and ranches than there were, while there is barely one third as many Indians. And these few are continually being attacked by plagues, of which many die, whereas the work is continually increasing. Seeking escape from their oppression, many flee to the woods and mountains, leaving their fields, towns, and homes, and wander from place to place in search of a spot where they may find rest. But wherever they go they find hard work, want, and misfortune. 120  Alonso de Zorita

The Audiencias continually instruct the provincial capitals to send repartimientos of Indians for labor in the Spanish towns of their districts. On construction sites, farms, and cattle ranches, the Spaniards pay each Indian 2 ½ or 3 reales a week. Some Indians come a distance of 20, 25, and more leagues, depending upon the provincial capital to which they are subject and the distance from that capital to the place where they must go to be assigned to employers. Consequently, to arrive on Monday they must leave their homes on Wednesday or Thursday of the week before. The Spaniards dismiss most of their Indians on Sunday, after Mass; those who worked very well, in the employers’ opinion, they let go Saturday evening. As a result, the Indians do not reach their homes until the following Wednesday or Thursday. But many never see their homes again; they die on the road from the hardships and excessive labor they have had to endure almost without food, for the food they bring from home does not last them for so many days. Moreover, they have had to work without their poor mantles, for when they enter the employer’s house or other place of work, he takes their mantles from them on the grounds that he must keep them as security that his Indians will not run away. In fine, in order to serve a week for 2 ½ or 3 reales, the Indians must spend two weeks or longer away from home. Since the Spanish construction projects, farms, ranches, and herds are so numerous and large, the Audiencias outdo themselves dispatching orders to the corregidores and alcaldes mayores to provide Indian laborers for the Spaniards. These officials fully understand the injury this is causing and know that the Indians are dying out, but their only concern is to aid the Spaniards. It avails the principales naught to complain and cry out that they cannot provide all the people that are demanded of them; indeed, they are arrested, fined, and mistreated for their pains. The religious warn of the consequences of what is taking place, but no one believes them. The invariable reply is: Let the order be carried out, let the Indians go and help the Spaniards. On account of this intolerable abuse the Indians are dying like flies; they die without confession and without religious instruction, for there is no time for such things. The fewer the Indians, the more burdens the Spaniards load on those who remain. Because of this and the ill treatment they receive, the Indians return home with their health shattered. Thus disease preys on them all year long, nay, all their lives, for its causes never cease. When they go to the construction projects or other places of labor, they bring from home certain maize cakes or tortillas that are supposed to last them for the time they are gone. On the third or fourth day the tortillas begin to get moldy or sour; they grow bitter or rotten and get as dry as boards. This is the food the Indians must eat or die. And even of this food they do not have enough, some because of their poverty and others because they have no one to prepare their tortillas for them. They go to the farms and other Why the Indians Are Dying  121

places of work, where they are made to toil from dawn to dusk, in the raw cold of morning and afternoon, in wind and storm, without other food than those rotten or dried-­out tortillas, and even of this they have not enough. They sleep on the ground in the open air, naked, without shelter. Even if they wished to buy food with their pitiful wages they could not, for they are not paid until they are laid off. At the season when the grain is stored, the employers make them carry the wheat or corn on their backs, each man carrying a fanega, after they have worked all day. After this, they must fetch water, sweep the house, take out the trash, and clean the stables. And when their work is done, they find the employer has docked their pay on some pretext or other. Let the Indian argue with the employer about this, and he will keep the Indian’s mantle as well. Sometimes an enemy will break the jar in which an Indian carries water to his master’s house, in order to make him spill the water on the way, and the employer docks the Indian’s wages for this. So the Indian returns home worn out from his toil, minus his pay and his mantle, not to speak of the food that he had brought with him. He returns home famished, unhappy, distraught, and shattered in health. For these reasons pestilence always rages among the Indians. Arriving home, he gorges himself because of his great hunger, and this excess together with the poor physical condition in which he returns help to bring on the cámaras or some other disease that quickly takes him off. The Indians will all die out very quickly if they do not obtain relief from these intolerable conditions. There is another injury—­a nd it is not a small one—­that results from their journeys. Because the Indians are now so few and the demands for their labor so numerous, each Indian is assigned many turns at compulsory labor. Moreover, contrary to what Your Majesty has ordered, the officials make the Indians go at the season when they should be sowing or weeding their fields, which are their sole wealth and means of support. The Indian must plant and weed his field within eight days or risk the loss of all his crops. If he returns from work when the time for seeding or cultivation is past, it does him little good to seed or cultivate, for he does not reap half the crop he would have, had each task been done at the proper time. Moreover, most of the Indians return sick or fall sick upon their arrival, and since they cannot cultivate or clear their fields, they harvest nothing or very little. As a result they suffer hunger all year long, and they and their families fall ill and die. On top of this, the officials fine them for not working their fields, though this is not their fault, and they are jailed and have to pay the costs. . . . The ancient kings and lords never ruled in this way, never took the Indians from their towns, never disrupted their way of life and labor. I cannot believe that Your Majesty or the members of Your Majesty’s Council know or have been informed about what is taking place. If they knew of it, they would surely take steps to preserve Your Majesty’s miserable vassals and would not allow the Indians to be entirely destroyed in order to gratify the wishes of 122  Alonso de Zorita

the Spaniards. If the Indians should die out (and they are dying with terrible rapidity), those realms will very quickly become depopulated, as has already happened in the Antilles, the great province of Venezuela, and the whole coast of northern South America and other very extensive lands that have become depopulated in our time. The wishes of Your Majesty and his Royal Council are well known and are made very plain in the laws that are issued every day in favor of the poor Indians and for their increase and preservation. But these laws are not obeyed and not enforced, wherefore there is no end to the destruction of the Indians, nor does anyone care what Your Majesty decrees. How many decrees, cedulas, and letters were sent by our lord, the Emperor, who is in glory, and how many necessary orders are sent by Your Majesty! How little good have all these orders done! Indeed, the more laws and decrees are sent, the worse is the condition of the Indians by reason of the false and sophistical interpretation that the Spanish officials give these laws, twisting their meaning to suit their own purposes. It seems to me that the saying of a certain philosopher well applies to this case: Where there is plenty of doctors and medicines, there is plenty of ill health. Just so, where there are many laws and judges, there is much injustice. We have a multitude of laws, judges, viceroys, governors, presidentes, oi­ dores, corregidores, alcaldes mayores, a million lieutenants, and yet another million alguaciles. But this multitude is not what the Indians need, nor will it relieve their misery. Indeed, the more such men there are, the more enemies do the Indians have. For the more zeal these men display against the Indians, the more influence do they wield; the Spaniards call such men Fathers of the Country, saviors of the state, and proclaim them to be very just and upright. The more ill will such men show against the Indians and friars, the more titles and lying encomiums are heaped upon them. But let an official favor the Indians and the religious (who are bound together, one depending upon the other), and this alone suffices to make him odious and abhorrent to all. For the Spaniards care for one thing alone, and that is their advantage; and they give not a rap whether these poor and miserable Indians live or die, though the whole being and welfare of the country depend upon them. God has closed the eyes and darkened the minds of these Spaniards, so that they see with their eyes what is happening, yet do not see it, so that they perceive their own destruction, yet do not perceive it, and all because of their callousness and hardheartedness. I have known an oidor to say publicly from his dais, speaking in a loud voice, that if water were lacking to irrigate the Spaniards’ farms, they would have to be watered with the blood of Indians. I have heard others say that the Indians, and not the Spaniards, must labor. Let the dogs work and die, said these men, the Indians are numerous and rich. These officials say such things because they have not seen the Indians’ sufferings and miseries, because they are content to sit in the cool shade and collect their pay. They also say these things to win the good will and gratitude of Why the Indians Are Dying  123

the Spaniards, and also because they all have sons-­in-law, brothers-­in-­law, relatives, or close friends among them. These friends and relatives are rich in farms, ranches, and herds; and the officials control a major part of this wealth. That is what blinds them and makes them say what they say and do what they do. Notes 1. Repartimiento system: a system of compulsory, paid labor drafts. This officially sanctioned, rotating labor draft was supposed to provide a more humane and controllable means of extracting Indian labor than the encomienda. Eds. 2. The greatest and most labor-­intensive public-­works project of the colonial period in New Spain was the so-­called desagüe, a series of ambitious operations aimed at ending the periodic flooding with which the lake region of central Mexico was plagued. The desagüe was an off-­and-­on project involving, at various times, the building of dikes, drainage canals, and subterranean tunnels. Here, Zorita appears to refer to the construction of the Albarradón de San Lázaro, a new dike built in 1555–56 (see Charles Gibson, The Aztecs under Spanish Rule: A History of the Indians of the Valley of Mexico, 1519–1810 [Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1964], 236–52; and also the reading by Joel Simon in part VI of this volume). Eds.

124  Alonso de Zorita

A Baroque Archbishop-­Viceroy Irving Leonard

Less than a century passed between the time when twelve humble, raggedly dressed Franciscan monks had walked barefoot from Veracruz to the capital (1524), and the time when a new archbishop, Fray García Guerra, made the same voyage, albeit in less-­ascetic fashion (1608). In that intervening time, much had changed. The Spanish Church had gone from the gentle optimism of the Catholic humanists to the rigid doctrines of the Counter-­Reformation and the ornate spectacle of the Baroque age. The Spanish colonies had changed from a dangerous frontier into a colony governed by one of the world’s most elaborate bureaucracies. Spain itself had gone from the world’s most vast and powerful empire to one that was overdrawn and clearly in decline. In the following vignette, Irving Leonard (1896–1962), who was a distinguished professor of Spanish American literature and history at the University of Michigan, vividly brings to life many of the cultural trends, sights, and sounds that characterized New Spain in the Baroque age. In Leonard’s account, Archbishop García Guerra embodies the spirit of his age: haughty and ostentatious, skilled in the “verbalistic intellectualism” so typical of the time, yet with a taste for profane pleasures and an unquenchable thirst for power. García illustrates the blurring of civil and ecclesiastical jurisdictions and the eclipse of the energetic missionary spirit of the early colonial clergy. Yet some things did not change: nature, in central Mexico, remained capricious, and people were still quick to give a mystical interpretation to out-­of-­the-­ ordinary phenomena. Surrounded by a numerous retinue and mountainous luggage, an imposing figure, in the panoply of high ecclesiastical office, stood on the foredeck of [a ship] slowly picking its way toward [shore]. Among the swarm of expectant inhabitants lining the shore word had quickly passed that the conspicuous personage was no less than a great Prince of the Church, the Archbishop newly appointed to the See of Mexico, Fray García Guerra by name and renowned for his vast learning and stirring eloquence. Increasingly visible to these eager onlookers, as the vessel hove to, was the commotion on deck caused by the obsequious crew and personal servants who scurried about to initiate the formidable task of lightering ashore the distinguished dignitary and his multitudinous effects. . . . 125

The [port city of] Vera Cruz, at which the travelers were disembarking, had an aspect of raw newness for, indeed, it was not yet a decade old. An earlier site of the port farther south was abandoned at the close of the sixteenth century because the fortified rock of San Juan de Ulloa offered better protection from the heavy gales which descended from the north and from the fierce pirates who might descend from anywhere. Otherwise, there was little to commend the location for human habitation and, important as the settlement was as a trading center and entrance to an opulent viceroyalty, its population barely exceeded two thousand. Situated in a dreary stretch of sand broken by tiny, sluggish streams, swampy bogs, and shallow pools of stagnant water, the moist heat, swarms of mosquitoes, gnats, and other noxious insects made the vicinity singularly unhealthy. The frequent, heavy downpours during the long rainy season, now approaching its end when the fleet put in, left a humid, dank atmosphere that was almost suffocating, and in it every sort of pest and repulsive creature seemed to proliferate. . . . Fray García Guerra hardly wished to linger in these unhealthy surroundings and, as everything was in readiness for his journey to Mexico City, he began the slow advance inland accompanied by a long caravan of horses, pack mules, coaches, litters, creaking carts, and pedestrians. It was a triumphal march and the progress of his carriage was deliberately slow to permit all his flock along the way to behold the majesty of a Prince of the Church and to pay homage to this intermediary of God. Well over a month elapsed before he made his ceremonious entry into the viceregal capital. . . . Meanwhile, the bright-­hued caravan halted at each Indian village and hamlet where the natives, doubtless prompted by the local cura, or parish priest, proffered their most colorful entertainments, often a curious mixture of aboriginal folkloric elements and those acquired from the Spaniards. These festivities were unfailingly accompanied by a noisy salute of fireworks. Between these stops the Archbishop’s carriage passed under an endless series of floral arches, erected scarcely a musket-­shot distance apart. As the episcopal conveyance approached these Indian communities a small band of villagers came forth to meet it, each individual bedecked in the peculiar attire of the locality and blowing odd strains on trumpets and other wind instruments. Escorted in this manner the Archbishop’s coach rolled into the tiny village square invariably adorned with floral chains and varicolored bunting, and there its occupant witnessed the colorful mitotes, the most solemn of the ceremonial dances and songs of the natives. Fray García Guerra vastly enjoyed these strange interludes in which these primitive members of his flock, arrayed in picturesque costumes and adornments, performed the most ritualistic of their pagan rites, for he had a special fondness for music in all its forms, and the novelty of these curious strains left him undisturbed by their non-­Christian origins. In his train were clergymen from Castile who were gifted instrumentalists, and the Cathedral council, doubtless informed of 126  Irving Leonard

the new prelate’s predilection, had thoughtfully sent down skilled musicians from Mexico City to lighten the tedium of his journey. Thus the Archbishop found delight in the variety of harmonies that charmed his ears along the way. Mexico City, situated amidst lakes in the lofty valley of Anahuac, suffered periodic inundations that had long called for drastic remedy. Only the year before so destructive a flood had descended upon this administrative center that a transfer of the municipality to another site was seriously contemplated. Commercial and other interests, however, strongly resisted this solution and the viceroy, on the advice of a German cosmographer, Enrico Martínez, and of others, had authored a gigantic engineering project designed to carry off the excess waters in a series of cuts and channels. The most ambitious part of this undertaking was a huge notch in the hills near the village of Huehue­ toca. It occurred to Don Luis de Velasco that a joint inspection of this work would be an admirable occasion for the first meeting of the respective heads of Church and State, and necessary arrangements were, accordingly, made. In due course Fray García Guerra alighted from his carriage at the viceroy’s temporary quarters whereupon the king’s surrogate in New Spain hobbled out to the front staircase and demonstratively welcomed the new prelate. After dining together the two most powerful dignitaries in the land drove away to inspect the progress made on the large cut. It was on this excursion that the first of an ominous series of mishaps befell the proud Fray García Guerra. The rise of this Dominican clergyman to the eminence he now claimed in one of the richest archbishoprics in Spain’s enormous empire had been foreordained and rapid. Singularly propitious were the auguries of the stars at his birth in 1560 in a village of Old Castile. Of noble ancestry, it was soon apparent that his studious temperament admirably equipped him for the verbalistic intellectualism of the age and culture in which he lived. His native talents splendidly adapted him for a luminous career in the Church, then so powerful in the affairs of man, and at the age of fifteen he sought to don the Dominican habit. In May 1578, he was duly admitted to the order of his choice at the Convent of St. Paul in Valladolid, and almost immediately he gained distinction in philosophy, metaphysics, and theology. His extraordinary gifts as a dialectician and his consummate skill as an orator quickly brought wide acclaim. His brilliance as an expounder of the doctrines then hardening under the pressures of the Counter-­Reformation brought recognition from the secular rulers of the land as well as from his Dominican superiors. After filling chairs of theology in monasteries at Avila, Burgos, Segovia, and Valladolid, he became prior of the convent where he had taken his first vows. When the weak monarch, Philip III, was induced to transfer his Court from Madrid to Valladolid in 1600, Fray García Guerra attracted the approving eye of the king’s influential favorite, the Duke of Lerma, who soon elevated the talented clergyman to the lofty eminence of the Patronato A Baroque Archbishop-­Viceroy  127

of Castile. After the birth of a royal prince destined, as Philip IV, to preside over the dissolution of the political glory that was Spain, Fray García Guerra officiated at the baptism. With Madrid once again the capital a few years later, Philip III did not forget the churchman whose eloquence and administrative ability he had admired in Valladolid. When death created a vacancy in the archbishopric of Mexico, it was the royal will that Fray García should accept it. If the clergyman’s hesitation was sincere, his Dominican superiors soon convinced him that it was a duty to fulfill his destiny. After papal confirmation Fray García was consecrated on April 5, 1608, and, two months later, he embarked for his New World post. Fate had smiled steadily upon this son of Old Castile and now had placed him in one of the most important offices to which a clergyman might aspire. The shift of activities from the Old to the New World seemed to mark, however, the turning point in the unbroken good fortune which had attended his career from birth. Almost imperceptibly portents of the future began to gather like clouds on the horizon, and the brightness of the day slowly dimmed until the darkness of death blotted all. The first of these omens, which hardly seemed to have any import, occurred when the new Archbishop and the Viceroy of New Spain rode together to inspect the drainage project at Huehuetoca. The road through the pass, over which they were driving, had been traveled again and again without mishap of any sort, and it appeared free of any hazards to the safety of these heads of the absolute government of the land. Suddenly and without warning their carriage turned completely over, spilling the august occupants by the wayside in a most undignified manner. Attendants hurried to their aid. Though both victims of the accident were badly shaken and slightly injured, they were able to resume the journey the next day. This incident seemed insignificant enough, but Fray García was to remember it as the beginning of his misfortunes. Again his caravan took up the slow pilgrimage toward Mexico City, stopping in each of the intervening villages for the customary ceremonies of fealty, homage, and entertainment so obsequiously provided by the inhabitants. Meanwhile, the viceroy sped ahead to oversee the final arrangements for the sumptuous reception of the Archbishop in the capital. Even slower than before was Fray García’s progress, for he was repeatedly administering the sacrament of confirmation, and the festive journey from Vera Cruz had stretched into a full month. But at last he reached Santa Ana, a suburb of the city, where he alighted from his ornate carriage and mounted a mule to make his entry with the simulated humility of the Founder of Christianity. A group of municipal officials, in brightest livery and astride gaily caparisoned horses, had come out to accompany the Archbishop on this final stage of his travels. As the small procession entered the outskirts of the capital it stopped at the Dominican monastery. Near a platform, erected by the members of 128  Irving Leonard

Our Lady of Ocotlán Sanctuary, Tlaxcala, a fine example of the ultra-­Baroque style. Photograph by Ichiro Ono, 1992. © Yu Ogata & Ichiro Ogata Ono. Used by permission of the photographer.

this religious body to do honor to a distinguished brother of their Order, Fray García dismounted from his mule and climbed upon the shaky staging where the Dean, councilors of the Cathedral, and other dignitaries were seated. Scarcely had the Archbishop begun to acknowledge the rejoicing of the assembly when the improvised rostrum trembled ominously and, with a loud crash, the entire structure collapsed, flinging its respected occupants to the ground and crushing a luckless Indian beneath it. Once again, as when he A Baroque Archbishop-­Viceroy  129

was thrown from the carriage at Huehuetoca, Fray García was badly shaken but received no severe injury, and presently the interrupted ceremonies were resumed. There were those, however, who, having heard of the earlier mishap, shook their heads gravely. These signs did not augur well for the new prelate. . . . All who came into the presence of this ecclesiastical Prince acquired a conviction that Fray García was, indeed, an inspired person happy in fulfilling a great destiny. Yet a close observer might have perceived that, with all the homage daily bestowed upon him, with all the Croesus-­l ike wealth at his disposal, and with all the assurance of an eternal reward at the end of his earthly existence, a disquieting urge vaguely stirred deep within his consciousness. Omnipotent as he was in the social and economic as well as the spiritual lives of his flock, an unspoken longing, which was growing in intensity, possessed him to dominate the political affairs of the realm as well. Don Luis de Velasco, the reigning viceroy, was a great proconsul of his Majesty who had served with great distinction in both Mexico and Peru. His long experience, proven skill, and sound judgment were indispensable to the weak and vacillating Philip III, sorely needing in Spain such able administrators to manage an empire already betraying symptoms of decay and disintegration. It was but a matter of time before royal summons would compel the return of Don Luis to the homeland. In such an eventuality the viceregal office commonly devolved upon the Archbishop as an interim appointment at least, and Fray García found himself dwelling on this possibility with increasing insistency. Like most at the summit of human institutions, the prelate’s existence was essentially a lonely one. As the accepted instrument of God he was the recipient of obsequious demonstrations of awe, veneration, and fear wherever he went. Nowhere did his basically gregarious nature find the intimate companionship and confidence that it craved. With all his appearance of piety and of a dedicated servant of the Lord, and with all his ascetic ostentation, he longed for the milder sensual delights of his flock. He loved the sweet melody of instrumental music, the singing of ballads and folk songs, the gustatory pleasures of the table, and the strong tonic of spectacles of the bull ring. To satisfy the first of these tastes Fray García had fallen into the habit of dropping into the Royal Convent of Jesus and Mary in the afternoon to visit Sister Mariana de la Encarnación and Sister Inés de la Cruz, whose company he found especially congenial. Both nuns were skilled instrumentalists and singers who infallibly charmed the Archbishop by lively renditions of popular airs. With perfect mastery they played liturgical music on the convent organ, and with effortless ease they shifted to the guitarlike laúdes and rabeles, strumming accompaniments to worldly songs that told of sentimental longings, of blighted loves, and of forsaken hopes. This musical potpourri they interlarded with sprightly chatter most relaxing to a prelate surfeited by the ceremonious formality of his daily life. The culinary arts of these talented ladies, manifested 130  Irving Leonard

in sweetmeats and dainty dishes, added delight to these restful occasions, and rarely did Fray García miss these agreeable afternoon visits. . . . Even this gentle and harmless association did not exempt Fray García entirely from the solicitation and importunity that often beset the powerful and influential, for the hospitable nuns were not wholly without guile. They, too, had dreams and ambitions. Long cherished was their hope of founding a new convent under the rule of the reformed Carmelites, and already a wealthy patron had willed a sufficient sum for a building and given part of the endowment. The benefactor had named the Archbishop an executor, and only the approval and a supplementary grant of funds by Fray García were needed to convert a dream into reality. Hence the devout ladies exerted themselves to charm their opulent guest who remained curiously immune to their overtures. This intimate communion with the nuns, however, had brought forth a confession of his own aspirations of becoming the viceroy of Mexico, and whenever pressed for action on the beloved project of his hostesses he invariably put them off by exclaiming: “Ah, my dear sisters, if God is pleased to bestow upon me the office of viceroy, I shall surely help you to start the convent that you so rightly desire! And what a splendid one I shall make it!” “Must we wait until then, Sire?” the anxious nuns pleaded. “Yes, my dears,” was his constant answer. “It can only be when I become the viceroy.” Fray García’s afternoon visits continued regularly and with equal regularity, as they plied him with appetizing tidbits, melody, and conversation, the nuns repeated their pleas. Invariably the obdurate Archbishop vouchsafed the same reply: “When I am the viceroy . . .” Even when Sister Inés de la Cruz professed to have had a vision in which the viceregal office was bestowed upon the ambitious prelate, Fray García remained unmoved. Until the prophecy was fulfilled he would make no commitment, and the impatient nuns could only pray more fervently for divine intercession. Another favorite diversion of the Archbishop were the drives in his ornate, mule-­d rawn carriage to outlying churches and congregations. The upset near Huehuetoca, when he had accompanied the viceroy on a tour of inspection, had in no way diminished his enjoyment of such excursions, which were of frequent occurrence. One day, however, in returning from the Santa Mónica monastery it happened that the well-­trained mules suddenly took fright and dashed pell-­mell through the streets of the city. Frantically the coachman tried to bring the careening carriage under control, and a few bystanders bravely attempted to check the flight of the maddened beasts. Fray García clung desperately to his seat in an effort to ride out the fury of the mules but, as his equipage plunged wildly about the thoroughfare, panic seized him. In a convulsive attempt to save himself he started to leap. Unfortunately, his foot caught in the carriage step, hurling him to the ground where he lay A Baroque Archbishop-­Viceroy  131

senseless. Though in time he seemed to recover from this mishap, so much more severe than the preceding ones, it had fatal consequences. Fateful for Fray García was the year 1611 which witnessed his greatest triumph and greatest disaster. It was as if the Fates, having bestowed their bounties so generously on the Spanish clergyman, were growing weary of his claims on their prodigality. His gnawing desire for secular power, after rising so high in the ecclesiastical sphere, appeared to turn his wheel of fortune downward. The series of accidents befalling him were unheeded warnings and now Nature itself was offering disturbing admonitions. The spring of that year brought the long-­expected summons to Don Luis de Velasco to vacate his viceregal office and return to Spain to serve as president of the Royal Council of the Indies. The same decree formally designated Fray García Guerra as his successor in Mexico. The prayerful and seemingly modest acquiescence of the Archbishop did not wholly conceal his inner delight, and his ostentatious humility hardly veiled his keen pleasure in supervising the elaborate plans for a second triumphal entry into the capital, this time with the full panoply of the viceregal office. He gave his closest personal attention to the details of erecting an ornate arch, of selecting the sonorous verses and Latin inscriptions to adorn it, of preparing the magnificent display of fireworks and the illuminations of the facades of public buildings by night, of rehearsing the Te Deum Laudamus and the lighter music that so delighted him, and of the construction of the grandstands along the line of march. Absorbed in these pleasurable activities all thought of his promises to the hospitable nuns at the Convent of Jesus and Mary fled from his mind. Indeed, the financial assistance pledged for the new Carmelite establishment was diverted to a pastime close to Fray García’s heart—­bullfights. To celebrate his elevation to the supreme rank of Archbishop-­Viceroy he decreed that these taurine spectacles should take place every Friday for an entire year. And presently he prevailed upon a reluctant city council to construct a private bull ring within the Palace since it hardly seemed fitting for one of his ecclesiastical eminence to attend such functions in public places. The first of these corridas occurred on Good Friday. The choice of the date, curiously symptomatic of the juxtaposition of the sensate and the spiritual in the Baroque age, apparently inspired no adverse comment except from one source. Sister Inés de la Cruz, whose protest possibly arose as much from disappointed hopes as from scandalized disapproval, begged the Archbishop-­ Viceroy in a note not to encourage such diversions on the day commemorating the Passion of Jesus Christ. But Fray García was too elated to heed this plea and the spectacle took place as scheduled. But a similar event the following Friday brought possible signs of divine displeasure. Just before the appointed hour of the bullfight earth tremors shook the city so severely that the corrida was postponed. Undaunted by this warning Fray García comfortably seated himself the following week to witness his favorite sport. Hardly 132  Irving Leonard

was the first bull charging into the ring when the city experienced another earth spasm so violent that the grandstand and the neighboring houses collapsed. The stone coping of the balcony where the Archbishop was sitting suddenly cracked and a portion of it fell, narrowly missing him and killing several onlookers below. But even so pointed a hint did not deter Fray García, who refused to revoke his decree calling for a weekly exhibition of the popular pastime. Before assuming his new office Fray García had retired to an outlying village to await formal notification of the departure of his predecessor from Vera Cruz and to make a ceremonial entry into Mexico City as viceroy. When the welcome word arrived that Don Luis de Velasco had sailed, the Archbishop’s first act was to abase himself publicly before the shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe. This rite performed, he permitted his attendants to address him by the coveted secular title “Your Excellency.” The inaugural march into the capital on June 19, 1611, duplicated the pomp and splendor of his earlier entry as Archbishop with, however, features of a more secular character. This time he rode a beautiful mare of the most pure blooded stock of the realm, the gift of the city council. Beneath the episcopal pallium supported by the regidores on foot, who were dressed in velvet uniforms of brilliant crimson, the Archbishop-­Viceroy presented a gallant figure. Next in order came the judges of the Royal Audiencia, the magistrates of other tribunals, and the flower of the viceregal aristocracy, each group vying with the other in theatrical splendor. Slowly the pageantlike procession filed through the streets hung with garlands and past the bordering houses almost concealed by the tapestries and hangings draped from their balconies. But again, as Fray García tasted anew the wine of earthly fame and glory, a tragic note jarred the festive moment. On the little Santiago square, the Indian community had erected a tall pole called a volador from which, as a feature of the celebration, acrobatic members swung high in the air as if from a lofty merry-­go-­round. This circus-­ like performance was a death-­defying act which thrilled the spectators and added a note of expectancy to the general excitement. Just as the Archbishop-­ Viceroy drew abreast of this plaza a performer, whirling through the air, lost his grip on the rope and fell, his body horribly shattered, almost at the feet of Fray García. Once again in the midst of rejoicing and at a moment of proud fulfillment tragedy struck, a sinister warning, perhaps, that the Fates were losing patience with the excessive ambition of a favored mortal. But this macabre incident scarcely interrupted the colorful inauguration. The glittering procession resumed its course toward the triumphal arch which simulated a huge fortress gate decorated by an intricate pattern of symbolic figures painted on its facade. Here the Corregidor administered a ceremonious oath to the new viceroy and handed him a large golden key. The ponderous doors of the imitation stronghold then swung open and the A Baroque Archbishop-­Viceroy  133

bright column, with Fray García in the lead, wended its way to the Cathedral where the thunderous Te Deum Laudamus reverberated through the nave. Presently the Archbishop-­Viceroy, accompanied by the city’s principal magistrates, departed by another door and entered the Viceregal Palace on the east side of the central square. There his accompaniment of judges of the Royal Audiencia and other officials obsequiously took their leave and Fray García retired into the chambers of his secular predecessors to relish the first moments of his ascent to the supreme authority of the State as well as of the Church in the fairest of the Spanish realms. Outside, in the plaza, deafening explosions of bombs and artillery-­pieces saluted the new viceroy. That night the whole city seemed ablaze with lanterns in doorways and windows and roaring bonfires in the streets and squares. These noisy demonstrations and the general rejoicing found the Archbishop-­Viceroy vaguely troubled. His satisfaction was tinged with disillusionment, a sort of desengaño. Realization, somehow, fell short of anticipation. The series of mishaps had engendered haunting forebodings, and already a recurrence of physical pain depressed his spirits. Ever since that dreadful day when he had leaped from the carriage drawn by runaway mules, the pain in his side had become increasingly severe. Also a series of strange phenomena of nature in recent months had filled him and his subjects with uneasiness. Were they harbingers of impending disaster? Oppressed by bodily discomfort and superstitious fears, he confronted with deepening anxiety the heavier obligations which his pride and ambition had thrust upon him. The disturbing aberrations of nature did not cease as Fray García took up his duties. The very month of his inauguration witnessed a total eclipse of the sun which terrified the masses. An unnatural darkness engulfed the city at noon, and it seemed to deepen as the afternoon advanced. “This phenomenon,” wrote a chronicler, “which the astronomers had predicted, produced an effect upon Spaniards and Indians such that both raced frantically to the shelter of the churches to implore God’s mercy, and they did not venture out until nightfall.” The seismic disturbances coinciding with Fray García’s bullfights were followed in August by the severest earthquake in the memory of the oldest inhabitant. With seeming pointedness it wreaked heavy damage on religious establishments where many inmates were crushed beneath the rubble. To everyone this disaster appeared especially terrifying because an inordinate number of tremors had preceded it. More than forty were experienced within thirty hours and all were exceedingly violent. Weeks and months passed without dissipating the dread and anxiety that pervaded the city. Christmas day brought even more menacing indications of divine displeasure. About half past two in the afternoon the whole sky over the Valley of Mexico turned a dark, reddish black and a shower of ashes fell, sifting a thin layer over the houses and the fields. This strange manifestation lasted until the great, crimson bowl of the sun dipped over the western rim. 134  Irving Leonard

Just as it disappeared, a frightful downpour of rain deluged the city, transforming its streets into rushing torrents of water. Clearly, these were unmistakable signs of heavenly wrath and inexorable summonses to repentance, most of all, perhaps, for the ailing Archbishop-­Viceroy. Fray García Guerra’s symptoms, meanwhile, had worsened, and it was clear that he was gravely ill. Attacks of pain alternated with high fever and confined him to his bed. The best physicians in the land, whose medical knowledge derived almost wholly from the ancients, Galen and Hippocrates, could prescribe no other remedies than repeated purges and bloodletting which further weakened the afflicted prelate. Early in January, 1612, a stormy dispute arose among the doctors in consultation regarding the necessity of an operation. Three of them were promptly dismissed while the others performed some crude surgery which doubtless hastened the patient’s demise. In sick despair Fray García had even turned to his good friend, Sister Inés de la Cruz, whose hopes for a new convent he had so long defrauded, and he begged for her prayers. He assured her of his deep repentance and pledged himself to keep his promise to her if he could but be restored to health. The response of the disappointed nun was hardly consoling to the doomed A ­ rchbishop-­Viceroy, for she merely urged him to prepare for death and to voice thanks to God that his sorrow was only in the temporal realm. Fray García now knew that he must resign himself to the inevitable. Calling his confessor, he received the last Sacrament and thereafter, with the feeble strength left to him, he performed such acts of humility and contrition as he could. Further bloodletting doubtless shortened his period of suffering. With Christian fortitude he endured his afflictions until “he surrendered his spirit to the Lord on February 22, 1612.” The chronicler gives a gruesome account of the autopsy performed upon the noble cadaver hardly had life departed. With morbid satisfaction he describes the advanced decomposition of various organs and the removal of the skull top and the emptying of the brains into a container for separate burial. This writer seemed to share the view of a contemporary Baroque poet, Jerónimo de Cáncer, that “también en lo horrible hay hermosura” (there is also beauty in the horrible). These repellent details, following almost immediately the recital of the colorful pageantry of the Archbishop-­Viceroy’s years in Mexico, provide an abrupt transition. Sharpening the contrast still further is the rapid shift from the vital, dynamic scenes of Fray García’s existence to the minute description of the veritable orgy of mourning at the public funeral. With morose zest the eulogist tells of streets and public buildings draped in black, of the mournful monotony of endlessly tolling bells, of the almost exuberant frenzy of the chapel decorations, and of the corpse lying in state, of the interminable processions of dignitaries, nobles, officials, monks, and soldiers marching to the rhythm of muffled drums and hoarse fifes, of downcast throngs of the kaleidoscopic society of Mexico, and of the A Baroque Archbishop-­Viceroy  135

all-­pervading solemnity of Death and the futility of things mortal. All of this tremendously heightened the tragic sense of drama infusing the spirit of that age. The death of the chief of Church and State and the ensuing funeral obsequies increased the mounting tension and anxiety of the inhabitants of the capital. Scarcely were the remains of Fray García deposited beneath the altar by which, a few short years before, he had sat at his episcopal installation flushed with the joy of adulation, when dread rumors and alarms gripped the nervous citizenry. With no successor to wield the absolute power of government to which all were accustomed, the more privileged elements of society especially fell prey to a panic [of ] fear. Like a noisome vapor, dark threats against law and order seemed to rise from every quarter. The judges of the Royal Audiencia assumed the executive functions, but their collective rule failed to offer the security that the single figure of the Archbishop-­Viceroy, endowed with the legal sanction of the distant Spanish monarchy and, seemingly, of God Himself, embodied in the minds of all. The apprehension of the upper classes spawned vague intimations of plots against the regime, of uprisings in the provinces, particularly of Negroes who had escaped from slavery and had taken refuge in the hills. These cimarrones were ever suspected of conspiring with the exploited Indian masses to throw off white supremacy. So great was the terror of Europeans and Creoles that they did not dare to venture out upon the streets and they barricaded themselves within their homes. This community neurosis became acute one night when a herd of hogs was heard rooting and squealing about the city thoroughfares. These sounds were interpreted as an assault launched by runaway Negroes and they created near panic among the judges of the Royal Audiencia as well as the citizenry. Even the coming of daylight failed to dissipate the general hysteria, and fear-­r idden officials rounded up twenty-­n ine Negro men and four women as alleged conspirators. In a desperate effort to deter subversive elements, the authorities barbarously executed the wretched suspects in the public square before a huge gathering. The severed heads were conspicuously displayed on pikes until the stench of decomposition caused their removal. Similar spasms of uncontrollable fear had shaken Europeans before between the terms of viceroys, but the simultaneous disappearance of both the head of the State and of the Church in one person had let loose a more violent wave of unreasoning fright and terror. Thus, in death as in life, this Spanish Archbishop-­ Viceroy singularly epitomized an aspect of that strange spirit of the Baroque which subtly dominated the entire seventeenth century and long after.

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On Men’s Hypocrisy Sor Juana

Women, by all accounts, occupied a decidedly subordinate position in colonial Mexico. It is ironic, then, that one of the most distinguished poets and intellectuals of the period was a Jeronymite nun, Sor (Sister) Juana Inés de la Cruz (not to be confused with Fray García’s solicitous friend in the previous selection). Born in 1648 in a small village in Puebla, to unmarried parents in very modest economic circumstances, she early evidenced precocious talents that brought her to the attention of the viceroy and his wife, who took the prodigy into their court as a maid-­in-­waiting. Her natural brilliance and insatiable thirst for knowledge led her to shun the accepted course for women in her day—­marriage—­opting instead to enter a convent (in 1669) where she would be relatively free to pursue her intellectual and artistic inclinations. The cloistered life in colonial Mexico was not necessarily ascetic, and Sor Juana was able to build a substantial library, read and write prodigiously, and socialize with many of the most illustrious personages of the day. In 1690 the bishop of Puebla censured her for neglecting religious in favor of profane subjects, and for behaving in ways inappropriate to her sex and vocation. In response, she wrote an intellectual autobiography, the “Reply to Sor Philothea,” perhaps her most famous single piece of writing. In this remarkable letter, Sor Juana ostensibly repents her aberrant ways, even while clearly celebrating the life of the mind. The bishop’s chastisement, however, compelled her to cease her writing, give away her books and musical and scientific instruments, and devote herself to charitable work and extreme acts of penance and mortification. She died in 1695, the victim of a plague that swept Puebla in that year. While much of Sor Juana’s poetry contains the flowery language and intricate symbolism characteristic of the Baroque style, the poem we include here—­a comment on the famous sexual double standard—­is written in a playful vein, even while it is quite serious in its intent. What fools, you men, Who so unfairly claim That women must bear all the guilt For that which you’re to blame:

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Juan Carreño de Miranda, Retrato de Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, 1651, oil on canvas, Rectory of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico City.

When uncontrolled desire Makes you seek what is debased, You tempt a woman into sin, Then want her to be chaste. You break down her resistance And then so seriously Insist that she’s been led astray By her own frivolity. In all your crazy recklessness, You’re like a child at night Who conjures up a monster Just to give himself a fright. With the vanity of an idiot You seal a woman’s fate: She should be Thaïs during courtship, But Lucretia as your mate.1 What could be more curious Than the man who fogs the mirror, And later, feigning innocence, Observes that it’s not clear? Favor and derision To you are close akin. You whine if she rejects you, And mock her if you win. With you, she can do no right, For such is woman’s curse. If she spurns you, she’s ungrateful, If she succumbs, she’s even worse. Your hypocrisy is so great It’s practically an art: The one who spurns you, you call cruel While the other is a tart. So how is she, whose love you seek, To keep her manner mild? Her ingratitude offends you, And her looseness drives you wild. Your pleasure seems to hover Somewhere twixt joy and pain. On Men’s Hypocrisy  139

If she does not want you, she is good, And yet you still complain. You cause your lovers sorrow With your manifold complaints: You turn them into devils Then expect them to be saints. And in this wayward passion Who, then, has the greater gall? She who falls to your entreaties, Or you, who pray for her to fall? And who has done the greater wrong If wrongfulness there’s been: She who sins for money, Or he who pays for sin? And why, indeed, does your own guilt Keep you in a state of pique? Either love her as you’ve made her, Or make her what you seek. Only when you cease to court her Will your attitude ring true, If you should rebuff her passion When she comes courting you. Your many powerful weapons With great arrogance you’ve hurled. And thus have brought together Devil, flesh and world. Note 1. Thaïs was a Greek prostitute who accompanied Alexander the Great on his campaigns; Lucretia, according to Roman legend, was the wife of an early Roman military leader renowned for her virtue. Eds.

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Whites, Negroes, and Castes Alexander von Humboldt

Between 1799 and 1804, Prussian naturalist Alexander von Humboldt traveled extensively in the Americas, gathering data on the region’s land, flora, and fauna as well as impressions of its societies, economies, and political institutions. Humboldt arrived in Mexico (then called New Spain) in 1803 and spent a year traveling throughout its many regions and interviewing its people. His findings were published in 1811 in four large volumes under the title Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain. Humboldt clearly regarded Mexico’s ethnic/racial situation as peculiar and complex, burdened at every level with inequalities and animosities. The tremendous diversity that José Vasconcelos would, over a century later, celebrate as the fount of Mexico’s greatness struck Humboldt as ominous as the colony approached its bloody wars for independence. Amongst the inhabitants of pure origin the whites would occupy the second place [to the Indians], considering them only in relation of number. They are divided into whites born in Europe and descendants of Europeans born in the Spanish colonies of America or in the Asiatic islands. The former bear the name of chapetón or gachupín, and the second that of criollo. The Spanish laws allow the same rights to all whites, but those who have the execution of the laws endeavor to destroy an equality which shocks the European pride. The government, suspicious of the creoles, bestows the great places exclusively on the natives of old Spain. For some years back they have received from Madrid even the most trifling employments in the administration of the customs and the tobacco revenue. At an epoch when everything tended to a uniform relaxation in the springs of the state, the system of venality made an alarming progress.1 For the most part it was by no means a suspicious and distrustful policy, it was pecuniary interest alone which bestowed all employments on Europeans. The result has been a jealousy and perpetual hatred between the chapetones and the creoles. The most miserable European, without education and without intellectual cultivation, thinks himself superior to the whites born in the new continent. He knows that, protected by his countrymen and favored by chances common enough in a country where fortunes are as rapidly acquired as they are lost, he may one day reach 141

places to which the access is almost interdicted to the natives, even to those distinguished for their talents, knowledge, and moral qualities. The natives prefer the denomination of Americans to that of creoles. Since the Peace of Versailles, and in particular since the year 1789, we frequently hear proudly declared “I am not a Spaniard, I am an American!”—­words which betray the workings of a long resentment. . . . The kingdom of New Spain is, of all the European colonies under the torrid zone, that in which there are the fewest negroes. We may almost say that there are no slaves. We go through the whole city of Mexico without seeing a black countenance. The service of no house is carried on with slaves. . . . From information in the enumeration of 1793 it appears that in all New Spain there are not six thousand negroes and not more than nine or ten thousand slaves, of whom the greatest number belong to the ports of Acapulco and Vera Cruz or the warm regions of the coasts. . . . By the laws there can be no Indian slaves in the Spanish colonies, and yet by a singular abuse wars give rise to a state very much like that of the African slave. . . . In Mexico the prisoners taken in the petty warfare which is carried on almost without interruption on the frontiers of the provincias internas experience an unhappy fate. They are generally of the nation of the Apaches, and they are dragged to Mexico where they languish in the dungeons of a correction house. Their ferocity is increased by solitude and despair. Transported to Vera Cruz and Cuba, they soon perish, like every savage Indian removed from the high table land into the lower and hotter regions. These prisoners sometimes break from their dungeons and commit the most atrocious cruelties in the surrounding countries. . . . To complete the table of the elements of which the Mexican population is composed, it remains for us to point out rapidly the differences of caste which spring from the mixture of the pure races with one another. These castes constitute a mass almost as considerable as the Mexican Indians. We may estimate the total of the individuals of mixed blood at nearly 2,400,000. From a refinement of vanity, the inhabitants of the colonies have enriched their language with terms for the finest shades of the colors which result from the degeneration of the primitive color. It may be useful to explain these denominations because they have been confounded by many travelers, and because this confusion frequently causes no small embarrassment to those who read Spanish works on the American possessions. The son of a white (creole or European) and a native of the copper color is called mestizo. His color is almost a pure white, and his skin is of a particular transparency. The small beard and small hands and feet, and a certain obliquity of the eyes, are more frequent indications of the mixture of Indian blood than the nature of the hair. If a mestiza marries a white man, the second generation differs hardly in anything from the European race. As very few negroes have been introduced into New Spain, the mestizos probably com142  Alexander von Humboldt

pose seven-­eighths of the whole castes. They are generally accounted of a much more mild character than the mulattos, descended from whites and negresses, who are distinguished for the violence of their passions and a singular volubility of tongue. The descendants of negroes and Indian women bear the strange name of Chino, Chinese. On the coast of Caracas and, as appears from the laws, even in New Spain, they are called zambos. This last denomination is now principally limited to the descendants of a negro and a female mulatto, or a negro and a Chinese female. From these common zambos they distinguish the zambos prietos who descend from a negro and female zamba. From the mixture of a white man with a mulatto comes the cast of cuarterón. When a female cuarterón marries a European or creole, her son bears the name of quinterón. A new alliance with a white banished to such a degree the remains of color that the children of a white and quinterón are white also. . . . In a country governed by whites, the families reputed to have the least mixture of negro or mulatto blood are also naturally the most honored. In Spain it is almost a title of nobility to descend neither from Jews nor Moors. In America the greater or less degree of whiteness of skin decides the rank which man occupies in society. A white who rides barefooted on horseback thinks he belongs to the nobility of the country. Color establishes even a certain equality among men who, as is universally the case where civilization is either little advanced or in a retrograde state, take a particular pleasure in dwelling on the prerogatives of race and origin. When a common man disputes with one of the titled lords of the country, he is frequently heard to say, “Do you think me not so white as yourself?” This may serve to characterize the state and source of the actual aristocracy. It becomes, consequently, a very interesting business for the public vanity to estimate accurately the fractions of European blood which belong to the different castes. Note 1. “Venality” refers to the sale of public offices. Eds.

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The Itching Parrot, the Priest, and the Subdelegate José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi

One of the most unforgettable characters of late colonial Mexico is the fictional Pedro Sarmiento, whose name was corrupted by his schoolmates to “Périco Sarniento,” or “Itching Parrot.” The protagonist of The Itching Parrot embodies many of the characteristics of the Mexican pelado, although he also has many traits of the pícaro, the wandering rogue of the Spanish picaresque tradition. Although born to a fairly reputable family, he proves too lazy to train for the “respectable” professions such as law and theology. He likewise disdains honorable trades, hoping instead to live by his wits, which consistently prove inadequate. He inhabits a colorful and corrupt world of gamblers, rascals, confidence men, charlatans, beggars, and thieves. His adventures pointedly satirize the society of late colonial Mexico, where pompous claims and highfalutin phrases substitute for both competence and compassion (among the colorful figures that populate the book, for instance, we find one Doctor Purgante, who spouts random terms in Latin but whose only remedy consists of prescribing laxatives). Fernández de Lizardi (1776–1827) was born into a creole family of modest means. By the time the movement for Mexico’s independence broke out in 1810, he had begun to write for and to publish political newspapers. While he was late to fully embrace the cause of independence, his writings—­which came to comprise fiction, poetry, and numerous essays—­were consistently critical of the Spanish colonial system. Fernández de Lizardi took special aim at the suffocating fiscal and administrative bureaucracy that marked the enlightened despotism of the Spanish Bourbon kings who had succeeded Hapsburg rule in the early eighteenth century. He espoused many of the reforms that would come to be identified with the Liberal cause: he decried corruption and incompetence in government, the Church, and the professions; he denounced slavery and racial oppression; and he favored the impartial and impersonal rule of law. His 1816 book, from which the following chapter is taken, is widely regarded as the first genuine Spanish American novel. In the following excerpt, we get a glimpse of corruption in both petty officialdom and the priesthood in late colonial Mexico.

144

If the boys at school had nicknamed me “Jumping Parrot” instead of “Itching Parrot,” they would have predicted my adventures accurately enough, for I jumped from one fate to another, from bad luck one day to good the next. They would see me go from parish sexton to beggar, then from beggar to scribe for the subdelegate of Tixtla, with whom I got on so well from the outset that he developed a deep affection for me. My happiness was complete when he had a falling out with his director, who left his home and village. My master was a subdelegate of the greedy and mercenary sort. He tried, as he told me, not just to recoup the money he’d paid to secure his position, but to make a handsome profit during his five years in office. With such upright and honorable intentions, he missed few opportunities to line his pockets, no matter how iniquitous, illegal and forbidden the means. He was a merchant with a talent for illicit commerce. He would extend generous credit to farmers, making them repay him in discounted crops at harvest time. He was rigorous and punctual in collecting what he was owed, and so long as he got his money he felt free to disregard the rights of competing creditors, whose only hope of collecting their debts lay in cutting him in for a share of the spoils. Although the custom had been abolished whereby subdelegates would collect a fine of one silver mark from persons accused of lechery, my master had not been apprised. He had his spies monitor the lives and character of all citizens, and not only did he collect his silver mark from those they denounced for lechery, but he charged them exorbitant fines in proportion to their means. Once they had paid him, he would let them go with a warning that the fine would be doubled for the next offense. He would give them a little time to leave the jail and return home, then he would fall upon them again and help himself to more money. One poor farmer lost an abundant years’ harvest to such fines. Another lost his small ranch for the same cause. Yet another shopkeeper went bankrupt, and the poorest were left shirtless. Such was the state of his affairs when his director left. His director had done everything; the subdelegate himself was little more than a sponge who bled people dry, while now and then signing his name to a court document or official correspondence. The poor fellow had no idea how to write a summary, certify a will, or answer a letter. I, seeing the extent of his helplessness, decided to amuse myself by arranging a trial and answering an official letter. He so admired my skill and style that he named me his new director, and he confided so much in me that there was no scheme or imbroglio of his that I did not know intimately, no pernicious fraud that I would not help him get away with. You would have to close your eyes and stop up your ears if I were to recount here all of the iniquities we committed between us in less than a year, for our deeds were truly foul and scandalous. I will therefore tell only of the

Itching Parrot, Priest, and Subdelegate  145

least awful, and I will tell it in passing so that my readers will have no doubt as to how we worked up from trivial crimes to the most heinous ones. In the villages there are always some miserable types who suck up to the subdelegates with all their might, hoping to score points by shamelessly prostituting themselves. The subdelegate, using me as intermediary, would give money to one such rascal, who would use the funds to arrange an illegal game of monte. This fellow would then gather as many gamblers as he could, whereupon he would inform us when and where the game was to be played. Upon his notice, we would form a patrol and fall upon the players, toss them in jail, and rob as much as we were able. That rascal would repeat his vile intrigues, and we our disgraceful actions, as often as we wished. In defiance of royal orders favoring the Indians, we would exploit those unfortunate souls at our whim, forcing them to work at whatever we saw fit without pay. On the flimsiest of pretexts, we would publish proclamations, imposing harsh fines for infractions—­fi nes that we would collect without pity. And what strange proclamations they were! We decreed that donkeys, pigs, and chickens were not to walk outside their pens; that shopkeepers must keep cats; that no one could attend mass barefoot; and other things of the sort. The village priest joined us in abusing the poor. I wish I could keep silent about the evil proclivities of this man of the cloth, but I cannot avoid addressing them because of the bearing they had on my departure from that village. He was well e­ ducated, a doctor of canon law, neither scandalous nor given to empty mannerisms. But such positive attributes paled next to his sordid and unbounded greed. He lacked charity, and it is well-known that without a solid foundation it is impossible to build a beautiful edifice of virtue. And so it was with our priest. He was energetic in the pulpit, punctual in his ministry, sweet in conversation, affable in manner, obsequious at home, and modest in public. Indeed, he would have been a most excellent parish priest had there been no such thing as money in the world. Money was the touchstone that betrayed the false gold of his moral virtues and practices. He was graceful enough to disguise his true nature so long as there was no lucre involved, but if he felt someone was trying to pick his pocket of even the tiniest sum then all friendliness, good breeding, sweet words, and benign aspect were gone. His flock would see a man quite at odds with the one they’d come to know, for he would turn utterly cruel, entirely lacking in charity and civility. In anything that stood to bring him money, he was relentless. He was unmoved by the miseries of the beggar, the tears of the wretched widow or the poor orphan. Nothing could soften his heart. But just so you can see that there is something of everything in this world, I shall relate one scene among many that I witnessed. Our priest invited his counterpart from Chilapa, don Benigno Franco, to attend the fiestas at Tixtla. Don Benigno was a man of fine temperament, unhypocritically virtu146  José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi

ous and sociable. One afternoon, the two priests were in the rectory preparing to amuse themselves with a card game until it came time to leave for the theater. Just then a poor woman entered the room. She was crying bitterly, with one infant nursing at her breast and another child of about three holding her hand. Her tears betrayed her profound sadness, while her rags spoke of genuine poverty. “What do you want, my daughter?” asked the priest of Tixtla. The poor woman answered through tears: “Father, last night my husband died, leaving me with nothing but these children. I have nothing to sell and no means to buy a shroud, nor even candles to place by the body. I was able to get these twelve reales by begging, and I’ve brought them to your grace. I’ve had nothing to eat, and neither has my little girl. I beg your grace, for the love of God, have the charity to bury him. I promise I will work at my spinning wheel and pay you two reales every week.” “Tell me, my child,” said the priest, “of what quality was your husband?” “Spanish, sir.” “Spanish? In that case you are six pesos shy of the fee specified in this fee schedule. Here, take it, see for yourself. . . .” So saying, he placed the fee schedule in her hands, and in an instant it was dampened by the miserable widow’s tears. “Ay! Father! What good is this to me when I can’t read? I’m begging your grace please, for the love of God, bury my husband.” “Well, my child,” said the priest with great cunning, “I hear you, of course. But I cannot do such a favor. I must support myself as well as pay my vicar. Go on, now, see don Blas, don Agustín, or some other gentlemen of means, and beg them to advance you those few pesos against future work. Then I will order that the body be buried.” “Father,” said the poor woman, “I’ve already seen those gentlemen, and they will not help me.” “Why then, hire yourself out. Go into service.” “Who is going to hire me with these children?” “Just go away and stop pestering me,” said the priest angrily. “I didn’t enter the priesthood to be a moneylender. The shopkeeper doesn’t sell to me on credit, nor does the butcher or anyone else.” “Sir,” insisted the unfortunate woman, “the corpse is beginning to rot and the neighborhood can’t abide it.” “Then eat it, because if you don’t bring those seven and a half pesos, don’t think I will bury him no matter how long you plague me with your tears. I know how you are, you shameless swindlers! You have money for parties and fancy luncheons while your husbands are alive, you buy new shoes and petticoats and other fine things, yet you pretend to be paupers when it comes time to pay the poor priest. Now leave, damn you, and trouble me no longer.” Itching Parrot, Priest, and Subdelegate  147

The wretched woman left there confused, tormented, and humiliated at the rough treatment she’d received from the priest, whose callousness and lack of charity scandalized all who witnessed the incident. But the widow returned not long after she’d left. She quickly placed the seven and a half pesos on the table, saying to the priest: “There is your money, sir. Now do me the favor of ordering the vicar to bury my husband.” “What do you know about that, friend?” our priest said to the priest from Chilapa. “Are not my parishioners a bunch of scoundrels? Did you not see how this knavish woman had the money she needed, but feigned poverty just to see if I would believe her and bury her husband for free? Would a less experienced priest have known those tears were phony?” Father Franco lowered his eyes and said nothing, his face reddening, as if he’d been reprimanded. Now and then he would look at the poor widow with great effort, and he seemed to want to say something. We watched this scene, unable to guess what secret Don Benigno was guarding. But our priest, scowling at the woman and tossing the money in his pocket, said: “It’s all right, you shameless swindler, your husband will be buried. But not until tomorrow, to punish you for your lies.” “I’m not a liar, Father,” said the woman, still more afflicted. “I am poor. The money was given me just now as alms.” “Just now? That is another lie,” said the priest. “And who gave it to you?” The woman released the child she held by the hand and, holding the other in one arm, threw herself down at the feet of the priest from Chilapa. Hugging his knees and bowing her head, she let loose a torrent of tears, unable to say a single word. The little girl by her side wept too, upon seeing her mother this way. Our priest was dumbstruck. Don Benigno bent down and lifted the afflicted woman, wiping away her tears. We were all spellbound by this spectacle. At last long last the woman calmed a bit and broke her silence, addressing her benefactor: “Father, allow me to kiss your feet and to wash them with my tears as a sign of my gratitude.” And turning to us she continued: “Yes, gentlemen: The Father is not only a fine priest, but an angel come down from heaven. After I left, he called to me in the corridor; he gave me twelve pesos and told me, almost in tears: ‘Go, my child, pay for the burial and do not say who helped you.’ But I would be the most ungrateful woman in the world if I did not shout out the name of he who did me such a great kindness. Forgive me for saying it, because as much as I wanted to thank you publicly for this favor, it greatly pained my heart to be so cruelly mistreated by my priest, who called me a liar.” The two priests were both flushed and confused, and neither dared look 148  José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi

at the other. The priest from Tixtla was stung at having his greed called out, and the priest from Chilapa at having his charity made public. Just then the vicar, with the greatest prudence, found a pretext to leave to do the burial, taking the woman with him. The subdelegate told everyone to sit down and carry on with the card game, so everyone was distracted. As you can easily imagine, since the subdelegate was notoriously greedy and the priest no less so, there was seldom any peace between them. They were constantly at one another’s throats, for it is well-known that two cats cannot reside amicably in the same sack. Each tried constantly to beat the other to the punch, to squeeze people a bit more pitilessly. So at every step there were new rivalries, from which came many complaints and quarrels. For example, the priest, though it was outside the scope of his official duties, would pursue incontinent couples to try to persuade them to marry, so that he could collect his wedding fee; the subdelegate pursued those same incontinent couples, so he could collect his fine. Sometimes the priest got his fee and the subdelegate would demand he surrender his victims; the priest would refuse; and so began a jurisdictional dispute. In this competition, as in all things, the poor were the losers, and they regularly took the rap by being sent to prison or being forced to pay up. The miserable Indians were the ultimate victims of these two rapscallions. Except for four fat cats who purchased impunity, no one could abide either the priest or the subdelegate. Complaints had already been lodged against them in Mexico for their offenses, but these were easily evaded since there was always someone willing to testify on their behalf, insisting the complaints were vicious slanders. But crime cannot go forever unpunished. It so happened that some of the prominent Indians, along with their governor, having long endured ill treatment from the authorities, went to the capital. For the time being they did not meddle with the priest, but they took the subdelegate to task, presenting the Royal Audiencia a long list of his crimes. They charged that he had forced the Indians to purchase goods they did not want; that he had forced loans upon the people of the village, and collected his repayment in crops at harvest time, valuing those crops at less than the prevailing price; that he forced people to work for whatever wage he decreed, and any who resisted would be beaten and jailed; that he permitted lewd public conduct so long as he was paid occasional fines; that he pardoned and freed a notorious murderer for a payment of 500 pesos; that through a third party he arranged illegal card games, then arrested anyone caught participating; that he forced Indians to do his housework for no pay; that he had three Indian women come to his home each week, paying them nothing, and not exempting even the governor’s own daughters from this servitude; that he charged Indians the same legal fees he charged Spaniards; that on market days he bought up all the scarcest goods, later selling those goods in his own store for wildly inflated prices; and finally, that he speculated with royal tribute funds. The petition Itching Parrot, Priest, and Subdelegate  149

concluded by demanding that the subdelegate be brought to the capital to answer these charges. The petitioners demanded that a commissioner be sent to Tixtla, accompanied by an interim justice, to investigate the truth of the charges, and if they were found to be true then the subdelegate’s employment should be terminated and he should be made to compensate the people of the village for the damages he had caused them. The Royal Audiencia agreed to the Indians’ request and dispatched a commissioner. This storm was brewing in Mexico [City] without our having the slightest inkling. We were not concerned about the Indians’ absence from the village, for they pretended they were going to have a religious image made. The commissioner found my boss enjoying some fresh air in the hallway of the royal houses and told him that his authority ceased from that moment, that a deputy would be named to take his place, and that he must depart the village within three days, and within eight days he was to present himself in the capital to respond to the charges of which he was accused. My master received this ruling coldly, but he had no choice but to do as he was told, leaving me to oversee justice in his stead. When I found myself alone, and with the authority of a judge, I proceeded to arrange things to my satisfaction. First up, I banished a lovely young girl from the village because she was living in sin. Or so I claimed, but the real reason was because she spurned my advances, even though I offered her the full protection of my interim judicial authority. Next, I brought charges against a poor man whose only crime was to have a beautiful but faithless wife. I used my power to dispatch him to prison, leaving his wife free to live openly with her lover, who repaid me with a small gift of 300 pesos. Then I threatened all those I could find who were guilty of the same crime, and they, fearful I would banish their lovers to who knows where, paid me the fines I requested, and even gave me a bit extra so I would harass them less often. Nor did I neglect to annul the most formal of documents, revoking wills, misplacing public papers like iou ’s and bonds, and other mischief of the kind. In the one month I served as interim judge I wrought more havoc than the subdelegate himself had done, and I managed to earn the enmity of all the town’s people. To crown my labors, I set up a public card game in the royal house. One night I lost big, whereupon I went on patrol and tracked down the other players. Those gamblers left my place at around midnight and went home, only to find themselves sent to jail for public gaming. The fines I collected covered nearly all of what I’d lost earlier. One night I took such a fleecing I was left penniless, so I raided the community funds and gambled away all they contained. But I did this so recklessly that others learned of it and told the priest and the Indian governor, who were responsible for those funds. Knowing that I had no defense, they left for the capital forthwith, taking with them the testimonies of the honor150  José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi

able townsfolk, as well as the report of the commissioner. But they did this with such stealth that I never caught a whiff of it. The priest was the one who enlisted the governor in these efforts; it was he who wrote up the report, gathered the testimonies, and sent them off to Mexico [City]. It was he who was the principal agent of my ruin. Of course, he did this not from some righteous zeal or love of the village, but rather because he had hoped to keep most of the money for himself, on the pretext of repairing the church; he had already proposed this to the Indians, and they had seemed agreeable to the proposition. When he learned of my adventures and realized he had lost all hope of stealing the money, he set out to destroy me, and he succeeded. Adding to my misfortune, the subdelegate, who had no way of proving his innocence of the charges leveled by the Indians and other townsfolk, resorted to the defense of fools. He claimed that he had no idea that his deeds were considered crimes, for he was a mere layman. He had never been a judge and so he understood nothing. He said that all of those misdeeds had been thought up by yours truly, that I was to blame for everything, for he had trusted me completely. These excuses, drawn up by the pen of a skilled lawyer, did not fail to sway the judgment of the Audiencia. They may not have deemed the subdelegate to be innocent, but those gentlemen decided, not unreasonably, that his culpability was mitigated by the fact that I was worse. Especially since, at this same time, the priest was informing them of how I had committed more outrages than the subdelegate ever did. Therefore, they (as I surely would have done in their place) hit me with the full rigor of the same law with which they had threatened my master. They largely forgave him, taking him for a fool and a bungler who had no business being a judge. They fired him from his job and demanded that his guarantors reimburse the royal treasury, and they safeguarded the right of aggrieved persons to bring claims against him should his fortunes brighten, for at the moment he was clearly broke. And they sent seven soldiers to Tixtla to clap me in leg irons and take me to Mexico [City] on the back of a mule. So oblivious was I to what was about the befall me that the afternoon the soldiers came I was playing a game of malilla with the priest and the commissioner at one real per point. I was thinking of nothing more than getting even for four bad hands in a row, and I was just about to pick up some cards when the soldiers entered the room. As these people have no manners, with little ceremony they asked which of us was the justice of the peace. As soon as they knew it was me, they threatened to arrest me. Not allowing me to finish playing my hand, they lifted me up from the table, handed the priest a piece of paper, and hauled me off to jail. The piece of paper laid out the charge made in the royal writ handed down by the Audiencia, and it said who should take my place in governing the village. I entered the prison, and Itching Parrot, Priest, and Subdelegate  151

in no time the other prisoners were mocking me mercilessly. In short order they avenged themselves for the many evils I had visited upon them during the course of a month. The next day, very early and without feeding me breakfast, they clapped me in irons, mounted me on a mule, took me to Mexico [City], and threw me in the Court jail. When I entered this sad prison, I recalled the cursed shower of urine to which the other prisoners had subjected me the first time I’d had the honor of visiting there, and of the harsh treatment the warden had given to my friend don Antonio, and of all of my awful experiences in that place; but I consoled myself with the thought that it would not be so bad this time around, for I had six pesos in my pocket. But the six pesos were soon spent, and I was not spared the horrors that poverty brings, especially in places like that. Meanwhile, my trial ran its course. I had no defense. I confessed and was convicted, and the Royal Court sentenced me to serve eight years in the King’s service in the militias of Manila, which was recruiting in Mexico at that time.

152  José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi

IV Trials of the Young Republic

The dawn of the nineteenth century found Bourbon New Spain in a state of agitation. Age-­old problems—­the elite’s monopoly of the land, the vast gulf between rich and poor and between the races, corruption in administration, tensions between church and state—­persisted. Adding to these tensions was the fact that the mother country had come to be ruled by the modernizing Bourbon dynasty, which sought to reform the colonial system so as to minimize the participation of creoles (as American-­born whites were called), to expand the imperial supervision of colonial affairs, and especially to increase revenues accruing to the Crown of Spain, which were largely used to finance Spain’s expensive participation in European wars. Creole discontent might well have reached a breaking point sooner had it not been for the fact that the Mexican elite presided over a highly exploitative system. The vast majority of the population—­Indians and castas—­tended to make little distinction between creoles and peninsulares: all seemed to be oppressors. Bloody rebellions of Indians in Peru and black slaves in Haiti served as object lessons regarding the high cost of dissension among the ruling classes. In late 1807 Napoleon Bonaparte’s troops occupied Spain. Bonaparte forced the abdication of King Charles IV and the renunciation of the throne by Charles’s successor, Ferdinand VII. The removal of the one factor that, more than any other, had given legitimacy and cohesion to the Spanish colonial system—­namely, the Spanish monarchy—­plunged the colony into confusion and violence that would last for more than a decade. And even when independence was achieved, peace and order were not. The first two-­thirds of the nineteenth century in Mexico would be characterized by government penury, political instability and corruption, peasant unrest, civil wars, and foreign invasions. Ideological differences arose between those who wished to preserve and ennoble such Spanish traditions as monarchy, hierarchy, Roman Catholicism, and centralism; and those who favored a sweeping move in the direction of republicanism, egalitarianism, federalism, and secularism. Eventually, the factions would be denominated “Conservative” and “Liberal,” respectively. Not until the last quarter of the century was peace and a

153

modicum of conciliation achieved. Even then, problems lurked beneath the placid veneer of an entrenched “order and progress” regime, and many of these problems would eventually erupt in the epic Mexican revolution of 1910. The readings included in this section seek to give readers something of the flavor of those times and to explain why peace, order, and progress remained so elusive.

154  Trials of the Young Republic

The Siege of Guanajuato Lucas Alamán

Spanish Conservatives seized control of Mexico City shortly after receiving news of the Napoleonic usurpation in 1808. From that time, Mexico was alive with creole conspiracies. The most famous of the creole conspirators was Miguel Hidalgo, the restless, reform-­minded parish priest of the small town of Dolores in the intendancy of Guanajuato. When his plotting was discovered, he was forced to launch his revolution months ahead of schedule, and without benefit of proper planning. On September 16, 1810—­today celebrated as Mexican Independence Day—­he gathered the people of Dolores and environs together and proclaimed the “Grito de Dolores,” which called for revolution in the name of Ferdinand VII and the Roman Catholic Church, but which also invited Indians and castas to avenge nearly three centuries of wrongs perpetrated against them by the Spaniards. The masses of Indians and mixed castes responded enthusiastically—­so enthusiastically, in fact, that the rebellion quickly fell out of Hidalgo’s control, and there followed episodes like that narrated in the following excerpt. At these first clear signs of popular rage, creoles became horrified that what they had long feared had finally come to pass. Most quickly withdrew their support. Clearly, Father Hidalgo was neither a gifted military man nor a meticulous planner; his armies were rather quickly dispersed, and he was captured and executed in 1811. He did, however, live on as a powerful symbol. For some, he became an icon of liberation; for others, his was a cautionary tale that proved the dangers of rousing the restive masses. Lucas Alamán (1793–1853), who would become a distinguished historian and the most important voice for conservatism in early republican Mexico, was seventeen years old in 1810, scion of a wealthy and influential family of Guanajuato. He witnessed the siege of the wealthy mining city firsthand, and the violent spectacle influenced his later conviction that irresponsible demagoguery would provoke anarchy, which would in turn spell doom for property and civilization (something he tended to equate with religion and the Spanish heritage). While his elitism can surely be questioned, his vivid, often gruesome descriptions make it clear why these nightmarish events haunted him throughout his life. Miguel Hidalgo was hardly straitlaced in his daily life and was quite unorthodox in his opinions, and he did not concern himself with spiritual minis155

trations to his parishioners. .  .  . Miguel spent his time translating French, which was very rare in those days, especially among the clergy. He also took great pains to foment several agricultural and industrial pursuits in the parish. He greatly extended the cultivation of grapes, which today are harvested in considerable abundance in that territory, and he began planting mulberry trees for the raising of silkworms. . . . He also had a factory built for making china and another for bricks; he built vats for tanning hides, and he set up workshops for diverse crafts. He was not merely generous, but a spendthrift in matters of money, which made him highly esteemed by his parishioners, especially the Indians, whose languages he spoke. He was also much appreciated by all those who—­like the bishop-­elect of Michoacán, Abad y Queipo, and [Juan Antonio de] Riaño, the intendant1 of Guanajuato—­were interested in the true progress of the country. Even so, it would seem that in some of these fields his knowledge was deficient, as was the orderliness which would have been indispensable to make them achieve real progress. Once Bishop Abad y Queipo asked him what method he had adopted for chopping and distributing the leaves to the silkworms in accordance with their ages, separating out the dry leaves, and keeping the furrows cleaned—­matters about which the books on the topic give so many and such scrupulous instructions. Miguel answered that he followed no order at all, that he threw the leaves out just as they came off the tree and the worms would eat whatever they wanted. The bishop, who told me this anecdote, later told me that Hidalgo’s revolution was like his silkworm raising, and it had similar results! Nevertheless, Hidalgo brought about many improvements, even using the silk of his harvests to make a few pieces of clothing for his use and that of his father’s last wife. He also augmented the keeping of bees, moving many swarms to the hacienda of Jaripeo after he bought that property. He was very fond of music, and even made the Indians of his parish learn it. He formed an orchestra, and had it perform all over, from the battalion of Guanajuato to the frequent parties he held in his home. The proximity of his place of residence to the capital city allowed him to go there often and to stay for long periods, which afforded me the chance to see him up close. He was of middling stature, stoop shouldered, dark complected and with lively green eyes, his head a bit slumped over his chest, his hair very white and balding, as if he had already passed the age of sixty, but vigorous, although neither active nor quick in his movements: a man of few words in ordinary dealings, but animated when arguing in the collegial style, as when he entered heatedly into some dispute. Rather disheveled in his dress, he did not wear anything but what the small-town priests normally wore at that time. (This was a cloak of black wool with a round hat and a large walking stick, and a suit of knee breeches, waistcoat, and jacket made from a kind of wool that came from China and was called Rompecoche.)

156  Lucas Alamán

In his plan of revolution, Hidalgo followed the same ideas as the backers of independence in [Viceroy] Iturrigaray’s councils.2 He proclaimed allegiance to King Ferdinand VII: he sought to sustain the king’s rights and to defend them against the designs of those Spaniards who had negotiated their country’s surrender to the French and who were then in control of Spain, men who would have destroyed religion, profaned the churches, and extinguished the Catholic cult. Religion, then, played the principal role, and inasmuch as the image of Guadalupe is the cherished object of the cult of the Mexicans, the inscription put on the revolution’s banners read: “Long live religion. Long live our most holy mother Guadalupe. Long live Ferdinand VII. Long live America and death to bad government.” But the people who rushed to follow this banner simplified the inscription and it became the simple cry “Long live the Virgin of Guadalupe and death to the gachupines!” 3 What a monstrous pairing of religion with murder and robbery! It is a cry of death and desolation, one I heard thousands and thousands of times in the early days of my youth, and after so many years it still resounds in my ears with a frightful echo! As Hidalgo, on this and later marches, passed through the fields and villages, he was joined by people who formed diverse groups or mobs. They carried sticks to which they had tied banners or multicolored handkerchiefs displaying the image of Guadalupe, which was the standard of the enterprise and which those who adhered to the party also wore as an emblem on their hats. The cowboys and other mounted men from the haciendas, nearly all of whom were of mixed blood, formed the cavalry. They were armed with the lances that Hidalgo had had made beforehand, and with swords and machetes which they customarily carried in their daily work; very few had pistols or carbines. The infantry was made up of Indians, divided by villages or bands, armed with sticks, arrows, slings, and lances. Since many of them took their women and children along, they looked more like the barbarous tribes, who emigrate from place to place, than like an army on the march. The caporales and mayordomos [overseers] from the haciendas who took part became chiefs of the cavalry. The Indians took their orders from their village governors or from the captains of the hacienda work gangs. Many carried no weapons at all, and were prepared for nothing but plunder. Mounted men each earned a peso per day, while those on foot got four reales; but since no reviews were held and there was no formal enlistment, this led to great theft and mayhem, even though a treasury was established in the charge of Don Mariano Hidalgo, the priest’s brother. Mariano Hidalgo did not trouble himself to provide supplies or means of subsistence for the disorderly mob. In the middle of September, when the revolution began, the corn was ripening in the fields, and in that era of wealth and prosperity for agriculture, especially in the opulent province of Guanajuato, the haciendas abounded in livestock and all sorts of foodstuffs. How unfortunate was the farm of a European which Hidalgo and his army chanced to pass by: with a tremendous cry of The Siege of Guanajuato  157

“Long live the Virgin of Guadalupe and death to the gachupines!” the Indians would scatter amid the cornfields and quickly gather in the harvest; they would open the granaries, and the grains stored there would be gone in moments; the stores, which nearly all of the haciendas had, were looted down to the bare bones. The insurgents would kill all of the oxen they needed, and if there were some Indian village nearby, they would destroy even the buildings in order to cart away the roof beams and doors. The haciendas of the Americans suffered less at the start of the war, but as it progressed all came to be treated in the same way.

The city of Guanajuato is situated at the base of a deep, narrow valley which is dominated on all sides by high rugged mountains. . . . The town had perhaps seventy thousand inhabitants including those of the mining camps. Of these, the Valenciana mines, which had been for many years enjoying uninterrupted prosperity, had something like twenty thousand people. The region enjoyed great abundance: the huge sums that were distributed each week among the people as wages for their work in the mines and related haciendas sparked commercial activity; the great consumption of foodstuffs by the people, and the pasturing of the many horses and mules used in the mining operations, had caused agriculture to flourish for many leagues around. In the city there were many rich homes, and many more which enjoyed a comfortable middle-­class existence: commerce was almost exclusively in the hands of the Europeans, but many creole families supported themselves easily from mining-­related activities, and they were all respectable in the orderliness of their dress and in the decorum they observed. The people, occupied in the hard and risky labor of the mines, were lively, happy, prodigal, and brave. So populous a city, situated amid the craggy hills which have been aptly compared to a sheet of crumpled paper, could not defend itself unless the mass of its inhabitants were united; so it was essential that its defense have the support of the common people. This was made fully clear when the intendant sounded the general alarm on September 18: a large number of people came armed with rocks, and they occupied the hills, streets, plazas, and rooftops in the early morning of the 20th, when the advance guard at Marfil believed Hidalgo was drawing near, which is why the alarm was sounded, and the intendant with his troops and armed peasants rode down the glen to meet him. The intendant, however, believed from that moment that the people were changing their minds, and he feared that the lower classes of the city would join Hidalgo when he arrived; thus, he changed his plan, deciding instead to take cover at a strong, defensible point while awaiting aid from the viceroy or from the troops which [General Félix] Calleja [commander-­ in-­chief of the royalist forces] was supposed to recruit from San Luis Potosí. 158  Lucas Alamán

In order to ensure the provision of corn, a food of primary necessity for the people and for many of the beasts employed in the mines, the intendant had built a spacious public granary, or alhóndiga, in which a quantity sufficient for a year’s consumption could be stored, thus avoiding the inconvenience of frequent fluctuations in the price of this grain, which was caused especially by the difficulty of traveling the roads during the rainy season. He came up with this plan in 1783, which came to be known as “the year of hunger” due to the terrible shortages. He chose to construct this building on a site at the entrance to the city, on the slope where El Cuarto Hill ends to the west, which is the point where the river that passes through the town meets the one that flows down from the mines. . . . The city council of Guanajuato, in the explanation they sent to the viceroy to vindicate their own conduct and that of the city’s inhabitants, attributed the loss of the city and all the misfortunes that followed to the intendant’s decision [to take refuge in the Alhóndiga]. They claimed that the lower classes would have remained faithful and resolute and that their spirit would not have strayed had they not noticed that they were being mistrusted, whereupon they began to say that the gachupines and high-­toned gentlemen wanted to defend only themselves, abandoning the common people to the enemy, and therefore they began to disperse among the neighborhoods and hills in groups. . . . [Preparations for the siege] were directed by Don Gilberto de Riaño, the elder son of the intendant, who held the rank of lieutenant and served in the regular line regiment of Mexico City and who was on leave in his father’s house. Intendant Riaño greatly respected his son’s knowledge in such matters, for this gallant young man had diligently studied the works of the marquis of Santa Cruz and other military authors. Understanding the resolution to abandon the city and concentrate the defense exclusively in the Alhóndiga, Gilberto came up with the idea of making flasks of mercury into hand grenades. These are iron cylinders, about a foot tall and six inches in diameter, with narrow mouths closed with a screw: they are filled with powder and grapeshot, and a small hole is made for a wick, which is ignited at the proper time. Having assembled all of the arms and munitions in the city at the Alhóndiga, the east door was sealed off with an adobe wall; thus there was no way of getting in except by the principal door, which opened onto the small plaza to the north. In order to win the people’s hearts, the intendant, with great solemnity, published a proclamation on the morning of the 26th, abolishing the payment of tribute. This favor, which had been conceded by the regency back on the 26th of May, had not been put into effect on the pretext that a study had to be made first. Now, given the circumstances under which it was published, it was not only viewed coldly, but the lower classes of Guanajuato took it as a concession made from fear: it was met with mockery and jokes, and it ended The Siege of Guanajuato  159

up swaying the minds of the crowd against the government. In the moments of a revolution, the most beneficent actions done out of convenience, produce a result entirely contrary to the one desired. . . . [Translator’s summary: At this point, Hidalgo sends two agents to demand that the city be surrendered and that all Spaniards be turned over to the insurgents. Intendant Riaño puts the proposal to a vote, and the defenders of the Alhóndiga, though poorly armed and lacking gunpowder, declare that they will resist to the death. They make ready for a siege.] A little before twelve o’clock, in the avenue of Our Lady of Guanajuato, which is the entrance to the city from the plains of Marfil, there appeared a huge crowd of Indians with few rifles; most were carrying lances, sticks, slings, and arrows. The first of this group passed the bridge . . . and arrived in front of the adjoining trench, at the foot of Mendizábal Hill. Gilberto de Riaño—­to whom his father had entrusted the command of that point, which he deemed the most hazardous—­ordered them to stop in the name of the king, and since the crowd continued to advance, he gave the order to open fire, whereupon some Indians fell dead and the rest retreated hurriedly. In the avenue, a man from Guanajuato said they should go to El Cuarto Hill, and he showed them the way. The remaining groups of Hidalgo’s foot soldiers, perhaps twenty thousand Indians, joined by the people from the mines and the lower classes of Guanajuato, were occupying the heights and all of the houses around [the Alhóndiga de] Granaditas, in which they placed soldiers from Celaya armed with rifles; meanwhile a corps of around two thousand cavalrymen, composed of country people with lances, mixed in among the ranks of the dragoons of the queen’s regiment led by Hidalgo, climbed along the road called Yerbabuena and arrived at [the top of San Miguel Hill], and from there went down to the city. Hidalgo went to the headquarters of the prince’s cavalry regiment, where he remained throughout the action. The column continued crossing through the town in order to station itself at Belén Street, and as they passed by they sacked a store that sold sweets, and they freed all the prisoners of both sexes who were locked up in the jail—­no fewer than three or four hundred persons, among them serious criminals. They made the male prisoners march on the Alhóndiga. The intendant, noting that the largest number of the enemy rushed to the side of the trench at the mouth of Los Pozitos Street . . . thought it necessary to reinforce that point. He took twenty infantrymen from the company of the peasants to join the battalion, and with more boldness than prudence he went with them to station them where he wanted them to be, accompanied by his assistant, José María Bustamante. Upon returning, as he was climbing the stairs to the door of the Alhóndiga, he was wounded above the left eye by a rifle bullet and he immediately fell dead. The shot came from the window of one of the houses of the little plaza to the east of the Alhóndiga, and is said to have been fired by a corporal of the infantry regiment from Celaya. Thus, 160  Lucas Alamán

The Alhóndiga de Granaditas, Guanajuato. Photograph by Tim Henderson, early 1990s. Used by permission of the photographer.

a glorious death ended the spotless life of the retired frigate captain Don Juan Antonio de Riaño, knight of the Order of Caltrava, intendant, correjidor, and commandant of the armies of Guanajuato. . . . The intendant’s death introduced division and discord among the defenders of the Alhóndiga at the moment when it was most necessary that they act in unison and with firm resolution. The counselor of the intendancy, Manuel Pérez Valdés, citing the fact that in the ordinance of the intendancy leadership falls to the counselor when the [intendant] is accidentally removed, claimed that since he was now the superior authority of the provinces, nothing should be done except by his command. He was inclined to surrender. Major Berzabal argued that, since this was a purely military situation, according to the ordinance he should take charge, since he was the veteran officer of the highest rank. He was resolved to keep up the defense. While this dispute could not be resolved, the confusion of the attack meant that everyone was giving commands and no one was obeying them. . . . Once the trenches were abandoned and the troops who defended the roof withdrawn, that wild mob rushed to the base of the building: those in front were pushed by those who followed, unable to turn around, as in an ocean storm when some waves are impelled by others till they dash against the rocks. The brave man could not show his mettle, nor could the coward find a way to flee. The cavalry was completely routed, unable to use its weapons and horses. Captain Castilla died, some soldiers perished; the rest joined the The Siege of Guanajuato  161

conquerors. The valiant José Francisco Valenzuela, turning his horse about, rode up the hill three times, opening a path with his sword; he was dragged from his saddle and suspended on the points of the lances of those who surrounded him in large numbers; even so, he killed some of those closest to him before receiving his death blow, shouting “Long live Spain!” until he gave up his final breath. . . . There was a store at the corner of Los Pozitos Street and Mount Los Mandamientos where they sold ocote [pine] chips, which the men who worked the mines by night used to illuminate the road. The crowd broke down the doors [of the store] and, loading up that fuel, they brought it to the door of the Alhóndiga and set it ablaze. Others, who were experienced at subterranean labors, approached the back of the building, which was surrounded by earthen walls, . . . [and they] began to drill holes to undermine the foundation. Those inside the building hurled iron flasks, of which we have spoken, through the windows down into the crowd. These would explode and bring down many people, but immediately the mob would close in tight and snuff out the flasks that had fallen under their feet, which is why there were so few wounded among the assailants, even though a large number were killed. Berzabal, seeing the door ablaze, gathered what soldiers he could of the battalion and stationed them at the entrance: as the door was consumed by flames, he ordered his soldiers to fire at close range, and many of the assailants perished. Still, those in back of the crowd pushed forward, and the ones in front trampled over the dead, sweeping everything before them with an irresistible force. The patio, stairs, and corridors of the Alhóndiga were very soon filled with Indians and common people. Berzabal, retreating with a handful of men who remained with him to a corner of the patio, defended his battalion’s banners along with the standard-­ bearers Marmolejo and González. When these men fell dead at his side, he gathered up the banners and held them tightly with his left arm, and he held out with a sword—­even though it had been destroyed by a pistol shot—­against the multitude that surrounded him, until he fell pierced by many lances, still without abandoning the banners he had sworn to defend. What a worthy example for Mexican soldiers, and a well-­earned title of glory for the descendants of that valiant warrior! [With Berzabal’s death] all resistance ceased, and no more than a few isolated shots were heard from some who still held out. . . . The insurgents, after taking over the Alhóndiga, gave free rein to their vengefulness. Those who had surrendered begged their conquerors in vain for clemency; on their knees, they prayed that their lives be spared. Many of the soldiers of the battalion were dead; others escaped by taking off their uniforms and mixing with the crowd. Of the officers, many young men of the city’s most distinguished families perished, and others were gravely wounded, among them Gilberto Riaño, who died a few days later, and José 162  Lucas Alamán

María and Benigno Bustamante. Of the Spaniards, many of the richest and most important citizens died. . . . There are various calculations of the number of dead on both sides. The insurgents took pains to hide their dead, burying them that night in ditches they dug in the Cata River bottom. The city council, in its statement, estimated the dead at three thousand; Abásolo, at his trial, said that there were very few. The latter claim does not strike me as plausible, and the former I think is rather exaggerated. Some 200 soldiers died, as well as 150 Spaniards. Their naked corpses were seized by the feet and hands and carried or dragged to the nearby cemetery of Belén, where they were buried. The intendant’s body spent two days exposed to the mockery of the mob: the people wished to investigate for themselves an absurd fable that had been circulating, which said that the intendant had a tail because he was a Jew. (This same ridiculous fable ran through the mob with respect to all of the Spaniards, even among those who had seen their naked corpses. Such is the ignorance of the common people!) . . . The [intendant’s] body was then buried in a mean shroud that had been placed there by the monks of that convent, receiving none of the honor that should have been due the mortal remains of a noble conqueror. No sign of compassion was permitted: one woman in the crowd, who expressed sympathy when the corpse of a European was carried by, was wounded in the face by the men who carried it. The people devoted themselves to pillaging everything that had been gathered at the Alhóndiga, and it all disappeared within a few moments. Hidalgo wanted to reserve the ingots of silver and money for himself, but he could not prevent the people from taking them. Later some of the ingots were found and taken back, for they belonged to the army’s treasury and so could not be included in the general looting. The Alhóndiga presented the most dreadful spectacle: the food that had been stored there was scattered all around; naked corpses were found half-­buried in corn and money, all of it stained with blood. The looters killed one another fighting among themselves for booty. . . . The people who had stayed on the hilltops awaiting the results now came down to take part in the despoliation, even though they had not been involved in the combat. Together with the rest of the townspeople and the Indians who had come with Hidalgo, they began the general looting of the stores and homes of the Europeans of the city, which began that same afternoon and continued all through the night and all the next day. They ransacked more pitilessly than any foreign army could have done. The sad scene on that mournful night was lit by many torches of candlewood and ocote, and nothing was heard but the blows of doors being battered down, and the ferocious howls of the rabble who applauded upon seeing them fall and then charged as if in triumph to steal the merchandise, furniture, clothing, and all kinds of things. Women fled in terror to their neighbors’ homes, crawling across The Siege of Guanajuato  163

the roofs, and, still not knowing if they had lost a father or a husband in the Alhóndiga that afternoon; they watched as the treasures their men had collected during many years of work, industry, and economy were snatched away in an instant. Whole families who had awakened that day under the protection of a father or husband, some enjoying opulence, others taking pleasure in an honorable yet moderate lifestyle, lay down that night in a deplorable orphanhood and misery. It was not as if many people ceased being rich while just as many emerged from poverty: no, all those treasures that in active and industrious hands fomented commerce and mining, now went up in smoke without leaving any trace but a memory of ancient prosperity. . . . The looters grabbed the most valuable things from one another. The astute and clever people of Guanajuato took advantage of the ignorance of the Indians to take their loot away from them, or to buy it at a low price. They persuaded the Indians that ounces of gold were not coins, but copper medallions, and they bought them for two or three reales; they did the same with the jewelry, the value of which they themselves did not know. On the 29th, Hidalgo’s birthday, Guanajuato presented the most lamentable aspect of disorder, ruin, and desolation. The plaza and the streets were full of fragments of furniture, the remains of the goods looted from the stores, and liquor that had been spilled once the people had drunk their fill. The people abandoned themselves to all manner of excess. Hidalgo’s Indians made the strangest figures of all, for on top of their own clothing they wore the clothes they had taken from the homes of the Europeans, including the uniforms of magistrates, so that the Indians adorned themselves with embroidered dress-­coats and gilded hats while barefoot and in the most complete state of inebriation. . . . Hidalgo wanted to put a stop to this disorder, so he published a proclamation on Sunday, September 30. Not only was this proclamation not obeyed, but inasmuch as there was nothing left to loot in the houses and stores, the commoners began to drag the iron trellises down from the balconies, and they broke into the homes of Mexicans whom they suspected of hiding goods belonging to Spaniards. Among the homes so threatened was that of my own family . . . Hidalgo came on horseback to the plaza where my house was located, accompanied by his generals. At the head of the group was the painting of the image of Guadalupe, and an Indian on foot banging a drum. Some country people followed on horseback, along with some of the queen’s dragoons in two ranks. The priest and his generals presided over this procession-­of-­ sorts, dressed in jackets like those worn by small-town militia officers; in place of the insignia of the queen’s regiment, they had hung silver cords and tassels from their epaulets, which no doubt they had seen in some picture of the French generals’ aides-­de-­camp; they all wore the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe on their hats. When Hidalgo’s retinue arrived in front of the 164  Lucas Alamán

Posadas store where the largest mob was gathered, they ordered the mob to withdraw. When the people did not obey, [one of the officers] tried to keep them away from the doors of the store by forcing his way into the midst of the crowd. Nearby, the flagstones formed a sharp slope, and at the moment they were covered with all sorts of filth and were very slippery. [The officer] fell off his horse, and while trying to get up, he angrily drew his sword and began to wield it at the crowd; people fled in terror, leaving one man gravely wounded. Hidalgo continued circling the plaza, ordering that the men who were dragging the balconies off the houses be fired upon. With that the crowd began to disperse, though for some time large groups remained selling the objects they had ransacked for outrageous prices. . . . When the tumult of the siege and sacking of the city had calmed somewhat, Hidalgo lodged his cavalrymen in the ransacked haciendas. The Indians remained scattered throughout the streets, and many of them, content with the loot they had taken, returned to their villages and rancherías. Desertion did not bother the priest at all, however, because he was sure he would find plenty of new recruits in all of the villages he passed through. Notes 1. Intendant: One of the reforms carried out by the Spanish Bourbons was the implementation of the intendancy system, wherein government-­appointed, professional, salaried administrators oversaw the affairs of their districts. Eds. 2. Viceroy José de Iturrigaray (r. 1803–8), after receiving news of the Napoleonic usurpation, allowed Mexican creoles to form a pro-­creole junta, or caretaker government, in the name of Ferdinand VII. This junta, along with the viceroy himself, was overthrown by Conservative peninsulares on September 15, 1808. Eds. 3. Gachupines is a derogatory term for Spaniards. Eds.

The Siege of Guanajuato  165

Sentiments of the Nation, or Points Outlined by Morelos for the Constitution José María Morelos

After Hidalgo’s death, another parish priest, José María Morelos, emerged as the most prominent military leader of the revolutionary forces. Morelos was a mestizo (some have described him as a mulatto) from Michoacán, who had studied briefly with Hidalgo and who joined the rebellion in its early stages. He was a far more competent disciplinarian and military strategist than Hidalgo had been, but his forces, too, were eventually scattered, and he was captured and executed in 1815. In 1813 he declared independence and convoked a Constitutional Congress at Chilpancingo, Gue­r­rero, where he presented a summary of his political and social ideas. They make for curious reading today, since they feature many concepts that would soon be clearly identified with “liberalism”—­for example, the equality of individuals before the law, popular sovereignty, fair taxation, and an end to slavery and servitude—­while at the same time upholding strict religious intolerance and established hierarchies. 1. That America is free and independent of Spain and of all other Nations, Governments, or Monarchies, and it should be so sanctioned, and the reasons explained to the world. 2. That the Catholic Religion is the only one, without tolerance of any other. 3. That all ministers of the Church shall support themselves exclusively and entirely from tithes and first-­f ruits (primicias), and the people need make no offering other than their own devotions and oblations. 4. That Catholic dogma shall be sustained by the Church hierarchy, which consists of the Pope, the Bishops and the Priests, for we must destroy every plant not planted by God: minis plantatis quam nom plantabir Pater meus Celestis Cradicabitur. Mat. Chapt. XV. 5. That sovereignty springs directly from the People, who wish only to deposit it in their representatives, whose powers shall be divided into Legislative, Executive, and Judiciary branches, with each Province electing its representative. These representatives will elect all others, who must be wise and virtuous people. . . . 166

6. [Article 6 is missing from all reproductions of this document. Eds.] 7. That representatives shall serve for four years, at which point the oldest ones will leave so that those newly elected may take their places. 8. The salaries of the representatives will be sufficient for sustenance and no more, and for now they shall not exceed 8,000 pesos. 9. Only Americans shall hold public office. 10. Foreigners shall not be admitted, unless they are artisans capable of teaching [their crafts], and are free of all suspicion. 11. That the fatherland shall never belong to us nor be completely free so long as the government is not reformed. [We must] overthrow all tyranny, substituting liberalism, and remove from our soil the Spanish enemy that has so forcefully declared itself against this Nation. 12. That since good law is superior to all men, those laws dictated by our Congress must oblige constancy and patriotism, moderate opulence and indigence, and be of such nature that they raise the income of the poor, better their customs, and banish ignorance, rapine, and robbery. 13. That the general laws apply to everyone, without excepting privileged bodies, and that such bodies shall exist in accordance with the usefulness of their ministry. 14. That in order to dictate a law, Congress must debate it, and it must be decided by a plurality of votes. 15. That slavery is proscribed forever, as well as the distinctions of caste, so that all shall be equal; and that the only distinction between one American and another shall be that between vice and virtue. 16. That our ports shall be open to all friendly foreign nations, but no matter how friendly they may be, foreign ships shall not be based in the kingdom. There will be some ports specified for this purpose; in all others, disembarking shall be prohibited, and 10 percent or some other tax shall be levied upon their merchandise. 17. That each person’s home shall be as a sacred asylum wherein to keep property and observances, and infractions shall be punished. 18. That the new legislation shall forbid torture. 19. That the Constitution shall establish that the 12th of December be celebrated in all villages in honor of the patroness of our liberty, the Most Holy Mary of Guadalupe. All villages shall be required to pay her monthly devotion. 20. That foreign troops or those of another kingdom shall not tread upon our soil unless it be to aid us, and if this is the case, they shall not be part of the Supreme Junta. 21. That there shall be no expeditions outside the limits of the kingdom, especially seagoing ones. Expeditions shall only be undertaken to propagate the faith to our brothers in the remote parts of the country. 22. That the great abundance of highly oppressive tributes, taxes and imSentiments of the Nation  167

positions should be ended, and each individual shall pay 5 percent of his earnings, or another equally light charge, which will be less oppressive than the alcabala [sales tax], the estanco [Crown monopoly], the tribute, and others. This small contribution, and the wise administration of the goods confiscated from the enemy, shall be sufficient to pay the costs of the war and the salaries of public employees. 23. That the 16th of September shall be celebrated each year as the anniversary of the cry of independence and the day our sacred liberty began, for on that day the lips of the Nation parted and the people proclaimed their rights, and they grasped the sword so that they would be heard, remembering always the merits of the great hero, señor don Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, and his compañero, don Ignacio Allende.

Chilpancingo, 14 September 1813. José María Morelos

168  José María Morelos

Plan of Iguala Agustín de Iturbide

After more than ten years of sporadic violence, when the fighters for independence had been reduced to little more than guerrilla bands, Mexican independence was quickly and unexpectedly consummated when a royalist general, Agustín de Iturbide, reached an understanding with rebel leaders and issued a vague declaration of independence in the town of Iguala (in what is now the southern state of Guerrero). Former royalists and rebels joined forces and rallied around this plan of the “Three Guarantees,” which celebrated the broadest points of agreement among the contending factions: independence, the union and equality of creoles (American-­born whites) and Spaniards, and Roman Catholicism. Iturbide, whose reputation as a military leader was for brutality rather than prescience, failed to anticipate the many challenges and difficulties that came with Mexico’s new political autonomy. His relations with the Constituent Congress created by the plan were troubled from the outset. They reached a breaking point when Iturbide, trumpeting the fact that neither Ferdinand VII nor any other European prince showed any interest in becoming emperor of Mexico, had himself crowned Emperor Agustín I. Resistance to this presumptuous move culminated in a rebellion headed by another former royalist officer, Antonio López de Santa Anna, the young commander of the Veracruz garrison—­a rebellion that ousted Iturbide in March 1823. Thus began a long period of penury and chronic political turbulence that quickly shattered the exuberant optimism apparent in the Plan of Iguala. 24 February 1821

Americans: When I speak of Americans, I speak not only of those persons born in America, but of the Europeans, Africans, and Asians who reside here. May they all have the good grace to hear me! The largest Nations of the Earth have been dominated by other Nations, and so long as they were not permitted to form their own opinions, they were not free. The European countries, although they achieved great heights in education and politics, were once slaves to the Roman Empire. That Empire, the most renowned in history, was like a father who, in his dotage, watched as his children and grandchildren left home, for they were of an age to start 169

homes of their own and to fend for themselves, though they maintained all the respect, veneration, and love due their father. For three hundred years, North America was under the tutelage of Spain, the Most Catholic and pious, heroic, and magnanimous of Nations. Spain educated and aggrandized it, forming its opulent cities, its beautiful villages, its remote provinces and kingdoms, increasing its population and splendors, knowing every aspect of the natural opulence of its soil, its rich minerals, the advantages of its geographical situation. We have seen the damage caused by our great distance from the center of the Empire, and we know that the branch is now the equal of the trunk: public and general opinion declare that we should be absolutely independent from Spain and from all other Nations. Europeans and Americans from all regions likewise believe this to be so. That same voice which sounded in the village of Dolores in 1810, and which caused the people so much hardship due to the disorder, abandonment, and a multitude of vices, also convinced the people that a general union between Europeans, Americans, and Indians is the only solid basis upon which our common happiness can rest. After the horrible experience of so many disasters, is there anyone who is now unwilling to support that union through which so much good can be achieved? European Spaniards: your fatherland is America, because you live here; here you shall have commerce and possessions! Americans: Who among you can say that you are not descended from Spaniards? We are held together by a dulcet chain formed by links of friendship, common interests, education and language, and a unity of sentiments. You shall see that these are close and powerful links, and that the happiness of the Kingdom depends on everyone uniting in a single opinion and speaking with a single voice. The time has come to manifest the uniformity of your sentiments, so that our union can be the powerful hand that emancipates America without the need of foreign help. At the head of a valiant and resolved army, I have proclaimed the Independence of North America! It is now free, it is now its own Master, it no longer recognizes or depends upon Spain or any other Nation. All shall greet it as an Independent Nation, and, with gallant hearts, we shall raise our voices, together with those of the troops that have resolved to die before abandoning this heroic enterprise. The Army is not animated by any desire other than to keep pure the Holy Religion we profess, and to preserve the general happiness. Listen, here is the firm basis upon which we found our resolution:

art. 1. The Roman, Catholic, Apostolic Religion, without tolerance of any other.

art. 2. The absolute Independence of this Kingdom. art. 3. Monarchical Government, limited by a Constitution suitable for the

country. 170  Agustín de Iturbide

art. 4. Ferdinand VII or someone of his dynasty, or some other prince, shall become Emperor. We shall have an established monarchy so as to prevent acts of ambition. art. 5. There shall be an interim committee [ junta] which shall convoke a Congress [Cortes] to enact this Plan. art. 6. This committee shall name a Governing body, and it will be composed of the representatives already proposed to the Viceroy. art. 7. It shall govern in accordance with the oath already made to the King, until the King shall come to Mexico, whereupon all previous orders shall be suspended. art. 8. If Ferdinand VII decides not to come to Mexico, the Committee of the Regency shall govern in the name of the Nation until the matter of who shall be crowned king is resolved. art. 9. This Government shall be sustained by the Army of the Three Guarantees. art. 10. The Congress shall decide if the Committee should continue or be replaced by a Regency until the arrival of the Emperor. art. 11. As soon as it is completed, the Constitution of the Mexican Empire shall enter into effect. art. 12. All of the inhabitants of that Empire, with no considerations except those of merit and virtue, are citizens qualified to accept any employment. art. 13. All persons and properties shall be respected and protected. art. 14. The Regular and Secular Clergy shall retain all of their properties and privileges. art. 15. All Government officers and public employees shall remain in office, and shall be removed only if they oppose this plan. Those opposed to the plan shall be replaced by those who distinguish themselves by their adhesion to the plan, as well as by their virtue and merit. art. 16. A protecting Army shall be formed, which shall be called the Army of the Three Guarantees. Any of its members, from the highest to the lowest ranks, shall be executed if they violate any one of the Three Guarantees. art. 17. This Army shall observe their Orders to the letter, and its Chiefs and Officers shall continue on the same footing as before. art. 18. The troops that compose the Army shall be considered as troops of the line, as shall all who come to embrace this Plan: all other citizens shall be considered a National Militia, and the rules for this and the form it shall take shall be decided by Congress. art. 19. Military ranks shall be determined by reports from the respective Chiefs, and shall be granted provisionally in the name of the Nation. art. 20. The interim Congress shall meet and proceed against crimes in complete accordance with the Spanish Constitution. art. 21. Those who conspire against Independence shall be consigned to prison; no further measures shall be taken against them until Congress dicPlan of Iguala  171

tates the punishment corresponding to the most serious crimes, including treason against His Divine Majesty. art. 22. Those who try to spread division and who are reputed to be conspirators against Independence shall be subject to close vigilance. art. 23. Inasmuch as the Congress which has been formed is a constituent Congress, Deputies must be elected with this understanding. The Committee will decide on the rules and the time necessary for the task [of writing a Constitution].

Americans: Herewith, the establishment and the creation of a new Empire. Herewith, the oath of the Army of the Three Guarantees, whose voice is that of he who has the honor of leading it. Herewith, the object for which I ask your cooperation. I ask of you no more than what you yourselves have wished and longed for: union, fraternity, order, interior calm, vigilance, and horror toward any turbulent movement. These warriors want nothing more than the common happiness. Join us to bravely advance an enterprise that in all aspects (excepting, perhaps, the small role I have played in it) must be called heroic. Having no enemies to combat, we trust in the God of the Armies, who is also the God of Peace, that those who make up this armed force, which brings together Europeans and Americans, dissidents and royalists, will be mere protectors, simple spectators to the great task that I have outlined today, which the fathers of the Nation shall retouch and perfect. May the great Nations of Europe marvel at seeing how North America frees itself without shedding a single drop of blood. In your joyful celebrations, say: Long live the Holy Religion we profess! Long live Independent North America, among all the Nations of the Earth! Long live the union that brings our happiness! Agustín de Iturbide

172  Agustín de Iturbide

Women and War in Mexico Frances Calderón de la Barca

The most famous of all foreigners’ accounts of life in nineteenth-­century Mexico is that of Fanny Calderón de la Barca, the Scottish-­born wife of the first Spanish minister to Mexico. Her lively letters to friends and family on both social and political matters, written between 1839 and 1842, form the basis of her enduring volume, Life in Mexico (1843). Calderón’s remarks on elite Mexican women consist, as she herself admitted, of sweeping generalizations, and they betray her for what she was—­an upper-­class foreigner who believed strongly in certain social conventions, albeit one with a droll sense of humor and a witty writing style. Nor did Mrs. Calderón shrink from reporting on the political affairs of her day. To lightly paraphrase her remarks below: “When a woman’s head is about to be blown off, it’s quite natural for her to ask why.” Her account here of a failed rebellion by the Liberal forces of Valentín Gómez Farías in 1840 affords considerable insight into the nature of Mexican politics in the early days of the republic. While Calderón joins the participants in the event in speaking of “revolution,” the matter hardly deserves such lofty terminology. Only a small portion of the population is involved in the fray. Most of the common folk scurry to get out of the way of the contenders, apparently caring little for the stirring pronouncements issued by both sides. The reader gets the sense of witnessing a bit of political theater rather than a meaningful attempt to set the nation upon a worthy course. July 5, 1840 You ask me how Mexican women are educated. In answering you, I must put aside a few brilliant exceptions, and speak en masse, the most difficult thing in the world, for these exceptions are always rising up before me like accusing angels, and I begin to think of individuals, when I should keep to generalities. Generally speaking, then, the Mexican Señoras and Señoritas write, read and play a little, sew, and take care of their houses and children. When I say they read, I mean that they know how to read; when I say they write, I do not mean that they can always spell; and when I say they play, I do not assert that they have generally a knowledge of music. If we compare their education with that of girls in England, or in the United States, it is not a comparison, but a contrast. Compare it with that of Spanish women, and we 173

shall be less severe upon their far niente descendants. . . . [As] to schools, there are none that can deserve the name, and no governesses. Young girls can have no emulation, for they never meet. They have no public diversion, and no private amusement. There are a few good foreign masters, most of whom have come to Mexico for the purpose of making their fortune, by teaching, or marriage, or both, and whose object, naturally, is to make the most money in the shortest possible time, that they might return home and enjoy it. The children generally appear to have an extraordinary disposition for music and drawing, yet there are few girls who are proficient in either. When very young, they occasionally attend the schools where boys and girls learn to read in common, or any other accomplishment that the old women can teach them; but at twelve they are already considered too old to attend these promiscuous assemblages, and masters are got for drawing and music to finish their education. I asked a lady the other day if her daughter went to school. “Good heavens!” said she, quite shocked, “she is past eleven years old!” It frequently happens that the least well-­i nformed girls are the children of the cleverest men, who, keeping to the customs of their fore­fathers, are content if they confess regularly, attend church constantly, and can embroider and sing a little. Where there are more extended ideas, it is chiefly amongst families who have traveled in Europe, and have seen the different education of women in foreign countries. Of these the fathers occasionally devote a short portion of their time to the instruction of their daughters, perhaps during their leisure evening moments, but it may easily be supposed that this desultory system has little real influence on the minds of the children. I do not think there are above half-­a-­dozen married women, or as many girls above fourteen who, with the exception of the mass-­book, read any one book through in the whole course of the year. They thus greatly simplify the system of education in the United States, where parties are frequently divided between the advocates for solid learning and those for superficial accomplishments; and according to whom it is difficult to amalgamate the solid beef of science with the sweet sauce of les beaux arts. But if a Mexican girl is ignorant, she rarely shows it. They have generally the greatest possible tact; never by any chance wandering out of their depth, or betraying by word or sign that they are not well informed of the subject under discussion. Though seldom graceful, they are never awkward, and always self-­possessed. They have plenty of natural talent, and where it has been thoroughly cultivated, no women can surpass them. Of what is called literary society, there is of course none. . . . There is a little annual lying beside me called “Calendario de las Señoritas Mejicanas,” of which the preface, by Galván, the editor, is very amusing. “To none,” he says, “better than to Mexican ladies, can I dedicate this mark of attention—­(obsequio). Their graceful attractions well deserve any trouble that may have been taken to please them. Their bodies are graceful 174  Frances Calderón de la Barca

as the palms of the desert; their hair black as ebony, or golden as the rays of the sun, gracefully waves over their delicate shoulders; their glances are like the peaceful light of the moon. The Mexican ladies are not so white as the Europeans, but their whiteness is more agreeable to our eyes. Their words are soft, leading our hearts by gentleness, in the same manner as in their moments of just indignation they appall and confound us. Who can resist the magic of their song, always sweet, always gentle and always natural? Let us leave to foreign ladies (las ultramarinas) these affected and scientific manners of singing; here, nature surpasses art, as happens in everything, notwithstanding the cavillings of the learned. “And what shall I say of their souls? I shall say that in Europe the minds are more cultivated, but in Mexico the hearts are more amiable. Here they are not only sentimental, but tender; not only soft, but virtuous; the body of a child is not more sensitive (no es mas sensible el cuerpo de un niño), nor a rose-­bud softer. I have seen souls as beautiful as the borders of the rainbow, and purer than the drops of dew. Their passions are seldom tempestuous, and even then they are kindled and extinguished easily; but generally they emit a peaceful light, like the morning star, Venus. Modesty is painted in their eyes, and modesty is the greatest and most irresistible fascination of their souls. In short, the Mexican ladies, by their manifold virtues, are destined to serve as our support whilst we travel through the sad desert of life. . . .” There are in Mexico a few families of the old school, people of high rank, but who mingle very little in society; who are little known to the generality of foreigners, and who keep their daughters entirely at home, that they may not be contaminated by bad example. These select few, rich without ostentation, are certainly doing everything that is in their power to remedy the evils occasioned by the want of proper schools, or of competent instructresses for their daughters. Being nearly all allied by birth, or connected by marriage, they form a sort of clan; and it is sufficient to belong to one or other of these families, to be hospitably received by all. They meet together frequently, without ceremony, and whatever elements of good exist in Mexico, are to be found amongst them. The fathers are generally men of talent and learning, and the mothers, women of the highest respectability, to whose name no suspicion can be attached. But, indeed, it is long before a stranger even suspects the state of morals in the country, for whatever be the private conduct of individuals, the most perfect decorum prevails in outward behaviour. . . . They are besides extremely leal [loyal] to each other, and with proper esprit de corps, rarely gossip to strangers concerning the errors of their neighbours’ ways; indeed, if such a thing is hinted at, [they] deny all knowledge of the fact. So long as outward decency is preserved, habit has rendered them entirely indifferent as to the liaisons subsisting amongst their particular friends; and as long as a woman attends church regularly, is a patroness of charitable inWomen and War in Mexico  175

stitutions, and gives no scandal by her outward behaviour, she may do pretty much as she pleases. As for flirtations in public, they are unknown. I must, however, confess that this indulgence on the part of women of unimpeachable reputation is sometimes carried too far. We went lately to a breakfast, at which was a young and beautiful countess, lately married, and of very low birth. She looked very splendid, with all the . . . diamonds, and a dress of rose-­coloured satin. After breakfast we adjourned to another room, where I admired the beauty of a little child who was playing about on the floor, when this lady said, “Yes, she is very pretty—­very like my little girl, who is just the same age.” I was rather surprised, but concluded she had been a widow, and made the inquiry of an old French lady who was sitting near me. “Oh, no!” said she—­“she was never married before; she alludes to the children she had before the count became acquainted with her!” And yet the Señora de ——­, the strictest woman in Mexico, was loading her with attentions and caresses. I must say, however, that this was a singular instance. . . . There are no women more affectionate in their manners than those of Mexico. In fact, a foreigner, especially if he be an Englishman, and a shy man, and accustomed to the coolness of his fair countrywomen, need only live a few years here, and understand the language, and become accustomed to the peculiar style of beauty, to find the Mexican Señoritas perfectly irresistible. And that this is so, may be judged of by the many instances of Englishmen married to the women of this country, who invariably make them excellent wives. But when an Englishman marries here, he ought to settle here, for it is very rare that a Mexicaine can live out of her own country. They miss the climate—­they miss the warmth of manner, that universal cordiality by which they are surrounded here. They miss the laissez-­aller and absence of all etiquette in habits, toilet, etc. They find themselves surrounded by women so differently educated, as to be doubly strangers to them, strangers in feeling as well as in country. A very few instances there are of girls, married very young, taken to Europe, and introduced into good society, who have acquired European ways of thinking, and even prefer other countries to their own; but this is so rare, as scarcely to form an exception. They are true patriots, and the visible horizon bounds their wishes. In England especially, they are completely out of their element. A language nearly impossible for them to acquire, a religion which they consider heretical, outward coldness covering inward warmth, a perpetual war between sun and fog, etiquette carried to excess, and insupportable stiffness and order in the article of the toilet; rebosos unknown, cigaritos considered barbarous. . . . They feel like exiles from paradise, and live but in hopes of a speedy return. . . . July 15, 1840 Revolution in Mexico! or Pronunciamiento, as they call it. The storm which has for some time been brewing, has burst forth at last. Don Valentín Gómez 176  Frances Calderón de la Barca

Farías and the banished General Urrea have pronounced for federalism. At two this morning, joined by the fifth battalion and the regiment of comercio, they took up arms, set off for the palace, surprised the president in his bed, and took him prisoner. . . . Some say that it will end in a few hours—­others, that it will be a long and bloody contest. Some are assured that it will merely terminate in a change of ministry—­others that Santa Anna will come on directly and usurp the presidency. At all events, General Valencia, at the head of the government troops, is about to attack the pronunciados, who are in possession of the palace. . . . The firing has begun! People come running up the street. The Indians are hurrying back to their villages in double-­quick trot. As we are not in the centre of the city, our position for the present is very safe, all the cannon being directed towards the palace. All the streets near the square are planted with cannon, and it is pretended that the revolutionary party are giving arms to the léperos [the urban poor]. The cannon are roaring now. All along the street people are standing on the balconies, looking anxiously in the direction of the palace, or collected in groups before the doors, and the azoteas, which are out of the line of fire, are covered with men. They are ringing the tocsin—­ things seem to be getting serious. Nine o’clock, p.m. —­Continuation of firing without interruption. I have spent the day standing on the balcony, looking at the smoke, and listening to the different rumours. Gómez Farías has been proclaimed president by his party. The streets near the square are said to be strewed with dead and wounded. There was a terrible thunderstorm this afternoon. Mingled with the roaring of the cannon, it sounded like a strife between heavenly and earthly artillery. We shall not pass a very easy night, especially without our soldiers. Unfortunately there is a bright moon, so night brings no interruption to the firing and slaughter. . . . 17th.—­The state of things is very bad. Cannon planted all along the streets, and soldiers firing indiscriminately on all who pass. Count C——­[is] slightly wounded, and carried to his country-­house at Tacubaya. Two Spaniards have escaped from their house, into which the balls were pouring, and have taken refuge here. The E——­family have kept their house, which is in the very centre of the affray, cannons planted before their door, and all their windows already smashed. Indeed, nearly all the houses in that quarter are abandoned. We are living here like prisoners in a fortress. The Countess del V——­e, whose father was shot in a former revolution, had just risen this morning, when a shell entered the wall close by the side of her bed, and burst in the mattress. . . . 18th.—­There is a great scarcity of provisions in the centre of the city, as the Indians, who bring in everything from the country, are stopped. We have laid in a good stock of comestibles, though it is very unlikely that any difficulties will occur in our direction. While I am writing, the cannon are roarWomen and War in Mexico  177

ing almost without interruption, and the sound is anything but agreeable, though proving the respect entertained by Farías for “the lives, properties, and interests of all.” We see the smoke, but are entirely out of the reach of the fire. I had just written these words, when the Señora ——­who lives opposite, called out to me that a shell had just fallen in her garden, and that her husband had but time to save himself. The cannon directed against the palace kill people in their beds, in streets entirely out of that direction, while this ball, intended for the citadel, takes its flight to San Cosme! Both parties seem to be fighting the city instead of each other; and this manner of firing from behind parapets, and from the tops of houses and steeples, is decidedly safer for the soldiers than for the inhabitants. It seems also a novel plan to keep up a continual cannonading by night, and to rest during a great part of the day. One would think that were the guns brought nearer the palace, the affair would be sooner over. . . . 19th.—­.  .  . My writing must be very desultory. Impossible to fix one’s attention on anything. We pass our time on the balconies, listening to the thunder of the cannon, looking at the different parties of troops riding by, receiving visitors, who, in the intervals of the firing, venture out to bring us the last reports—­wondering, speculating, fearing, hoping, and excessively tired of the whole affair. Gómez Farías, the prime mover of this revolution, is a distinguished character, one of the notabilities of the country, and has always maintained the same principles, standing up for “rapid and radical reform.” He is a native of Guadalajara, and his literary career is said to have been brilliant. He is also said to be a man of an ardent imagination and great energy. His name has appeared in every public event. He first aided in the cause of Independence, then, when deputy for Zacatecas, showed much zeal in favour of Yturbide—­was afterwards a warm partisan of the federal cause—­contributed to the election of General Victoria, afterwards to that of Pedraza—­took an active part in the political changes of ’33 and ’34; detests the Spaniards, and during his presidency endeavoured to abolish the privileges of the clergy and troops—­suppressed monastic institutions—­g ranted absolute liberty of opinion—­abolished the laws against the liberty of the press—­created many literary institutions, and whatever were his political errors, and the ruthlessness with which in the name of liberty and reform he marched to the attainment of his object, without respect for the most sacred things, he is generally allowed to be a man of integrity, and even by his enemies, an enthusiast, who deceives himself as much as others. Now in the hopes of obtaining some uncertain and visionary good, and even while declaring his horror of civil war and bloodshed, he has risen in rebellion against the actual government, and is the cause of the cruel war now raging, not in the open fields or even in the scattered suburbs, but in the very heart of a populous city. 178  Frances Calderón de la Barca

This morning all manner of opinions are afloat. Some believe that Santa Anna, [who] has started from his retreat at Manga de Clavo, and will arrive to-­day—­w ill himself swallow the disputed oyster (the presidential chair), and give each of the combatants a shell apiece; some that a fresh supply of troops for the government will arrive to-­day, and others that the rebels must eventually triumph. Among the reports which I trust may be classed as doubtful, is, that General Urrea has issued a proclamation, promising three hours’ pillage to all who join him. Then will be the time for testing the virtues of all the diplomatic drapeaux. . . . 20th.—­We were astonished this morning at the general tranquillity, and concluded that, instead of having attacked the rebels, the government was holding a parley with them, but a note from the English minister informs us that a skirmish has taken place between the two parties at one of the gates of the city, in which the government party has triumphed. So far the news is good. Our street has a most picturesque and lively appearance this morning. It is crowded with Indians from the country, bringing in their fruit and vegetables for sale, and establishing a temporary market in front of the church of San Fernando. Innumerable carriages, drawn by mules, are passing along, packed inside and out, full of families hurrying to the country with their children and movables. Those who are poorer are making their way on foot—­men and women carrying mattresses, and little children following with baskets and bird-­cages—­carts are passing, loaded with chairs and tables and beds, and all manner of old furniture, uprooted for the first time no doubt since many years—­a ll are taking advantage of this temporary cessation of firing to make their escape. Our stables are full of mules and horses sent us by our friends in the centre of the city, where all supplies of water are cut off. . . . 21st.—­A fter passing a sleepless night, listening to the roaring of cannon, and figuring to ourselves the devastation that must have taken place, we find to our amusement that nothing decisive has occurred. The noise last night was mere skirmishing, and half the cannons were fired in the air. In the darkness there was no mark. But though the loss on either side is so much less than might have been expected, the rebels in the palace cannot be very comfortable, for they say that the air is infected by the number of unburied dead bodies lying there; indeed there are many lying unburied on the streets, which is enough to raise a fever, to add to the calamitous state of things. . . . It is now evening, and again they announce an attack upon the palace, but I do not believe them, and listen to the cannon with tolerable tranquillity. All day families continue to pass by, leaving Mexico. The poor shopkeepers are to be pitied. Besides the total cessation of trade, one at least has been shot, and others plundered. A truce of two hours was granted this afternoon, to bury the dead, who were carried out of the palace. . . . Women and War in Mexico  179

Calderón de la Barca. Death attacks even the young woman. Artist unknown, from La portentosa vida de la muerte, emperatriz de los sepulcros by Fray Joaquín Bolaños (Mexico City: D. Joseph de Jauregui, 1792), facing p. 216.

26th.—­. . . Firing continues, but without any decided result. It is a sound that one does not learn to hear with indifference. There seems little doubt that ultimately the government will gain the day, but the country will no doubt remain for some time in a melancholy state of disorder. Bills are fastened today on the corners of the streets, forbidding all ingress or egress through the military lines, from six in the evening till eight in the morning. Gentlemen who live near us now venture in towards evening, to talk politics or play at whist; but generally, in the middle of a game, some report is brought in, which drives them back to their houses and families with all possible haste. . . . Last night the archbishop paid a visit to the president, in the convent of San Agustín, to intercede in favour of the pronunciados. The mortars have not yet played against the palace, owing, it is said, to the desire of the general-­i n-­ chief to avoid the further effusion of blood. The tranquillity of the sovereign people during all this period is astonishing. In what other city in the world would they not have taken part with one or other side? Shops shut workmen out of employment, thousands of idle people, subsisting, Heaven only knows how, yet no riot, no confusion, appar180  Frances Calderón de la Barca

ently no impatience. Groups of people collect on the streets, or stand talking before their doors, and speculate upon probabilities, but await the decision of their military chiefs as if it were a judgment from Heaven, from which it were both useless and impious to appeal. 27th.—­“Long live the Mexican Republic! Long live the Supreme Government!” Thus begins the government bulletin of to-­day, to which I say Amen! with all my heart, since it ushers in the news of the termination of the revolution. And what particularly attracts my attention is, that instead of the usual stamp, the eagle, serpent, and nopal, we have to-­day, a shaggy pony, flying as never did mortal horse before, his tail and mane in a most violent state of excitement, his four short legs all in the air at once, and on his back a man in a jockey cap, furiously blowing a trumpet, from which issues a white flag, on which is printed “News!” in English! and apparently in the act of springing over a milestone, on which is inscribed, also in English—­“100 to New York!” “We have,” says the government, “the grateful satisfaction of announcing that the revolution of this capital has terminated happily. The rebellious troops having offered, in the night, to lay down arms upon certain conditions, his Excellency, the Commander-­in-­Chief, has accepted their proposals with convenient modifications, which will be verified to-­day; the empire of laws, order, tranquillity, and all other social guarantees being thus re-­established,” etc. Cuevas, Minister of the Interior, publishes a circular addressed to the governors of the departments to the same effect, adding, that “in consideration of the inhabitants and properties which required the prompt termination of this disastrous revolution, the guarantees of personal safety solicited by the rebels have been granted, but none of their pretensions have been acceded to; the conspiracy of the fifteenth having thus had no other effect but to make manifest the general wish and opinion in favour of the government, laws, and legitimate authorities.” A similar circular is published by General Almonte. Having arrived at this satisfactory conclusion, which must be as agreeable to you as it is to us, I shall close this long letter, merely observing, in apology, that as Madame de Stael said, in answer to the remark, that “Women have nothing to do with politics,”—­“That may be, but when a woman’s head is about to be cut off, it is natural she should ask why?” so it appears to me, that when bullets are whizzing about our ears, and shells falling within a few yards of us, it ought to be considered extremely natural, and quite feminine, to inquire into the cause of such phenomena.

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The Glorious Revolution of 1844 Guillermo Prieto

Anastasio Bustamante, the president against whom the 1840 rebellion was fought, succumbed to a successful rebellion the following year. This one resulted in the provisional presidency of Antonio López de Santa Anna, Mexico’s most durable caudillo. Santa Anna ruled in very intemperate and imperious fashion, disbanding Congress when it tried to pass a constitution guaranteeing human rights and an end to special privileges and monopolies, and granting himself, as president, powers that were practically absolute. The rebellion against Santa Anna, declared in 1844, went quickly and smoothly, ending in his arrest and, supposedly, permanent exile (though in fact, he would continue to be a force in Mexican politics for another ten years). The following excerpt, by one of Santa Anna’s many detractors, describes the decadence of Santa Anna’s “Court,” and celebrates the 1844 rebellion (in the hyperbolic fashion of the time) as one of the purest and noblest in Mexico’s history. Guillermo Prieto (1818–97) was a poet, educator, historian, and political supporter of liberal causes. He would later act as finance minister in the Liberal government of Benito Juárez. The peculiar conditions that our society inherited from colonial tradition meant that all power and life were centered in Mexico City. The city was the source of jobs and favors, the wellspring of business, the center of entertainment and fashion, the meeting place for wealthy people from all over, and the ledger where civilization recorded its achievements and treasures. The court of Santa Anna had much luster, and although discontent and misery reigned in the provinces, around the dictator there were daily dances and banquets, and the meetings in the home of Señora Vallejos in San Angel were among the best and most exclusive ever seen in Mexico. Of course, everything was designed to suit the tastes of the arbiter of the country’s destiny. Were it possible to present a scene which would reveal Mexico at a single glance, it would have to be the Easter week festivities in San Agustín de las Cuevas. There were grand church celebrations, with bells chiming, fireworks, and chamber music. There were taverns, ice-­houses, inns, and shops everywhere; dice games and roulette wheels, card games and little colored balls . . .

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games with all their many complications and tricks. There were banners hung between the rooftops of the pulquerías and cantinas bearing announcements of all kinds. At the outskirts of town, under the trees or among the workers’ huts, there were mules, horses, coaches, small canopied carriages and carts, all bearing wanton, angry people. On the sidewalks and in the streets, there were nothing but dense crowds; one would be inundated, as if swimming in a sea of people dressed in all colors, wearing button-­down trousers, long overcoats, large hats—­the ridged hats of the priests, the round hats of the friars, and the straw hats of the lower-­class people. There were games of monte like the one at the Hospicio, where they displayed a large slab of gold weighing many ounces and had a pot of a hundred thousand pesos. The gaming salon opened onto a delightful flower garden, full of leafy fruit trees and exquisite flowers, surrounded by crystalline fountains and enchanting waterspouts. Under the trees were tables with liquors and refreshments, and in the tavern lunches and magnificent meals were always served, along with chocolates, coffee, sweets, and whatever whetted the appetites of the opulent gamblers. The trick was to bet enormous sums, and to greet loss with studied indifference. Thus, stories were told of Manuelito Rodríguez, who one Easter, with his profit from selling a pair of scissors, won two hundred thousand pesos playing la dobla; and of Matías Royuela, who once, while chatting away, placed a twenty thousand peso bet; when it was announced that he had lost, he did not for one moment interrupt the interesting tale with which he was regaling his friends. The most illustrious members of society, eminent figures in the court and the Church, in public affairs and commerce, gave themselves over to the gambler’s cult. The shepherds of souls, along with everyone else, gathered ’round the green felt. So did the fathers of families and merchants jealous of their credit. There was one hacendado who condemned himself to privations for an entire year just so he could award himself the pleasure of losing forty or fifty thousand pesos at the Easter festivities of San Agustín. The center of this frantic revel was the plaza, with its large building containing an ice-­house, an inn, public and private games, and on the ground floor, the great plaza of fighting cocks where huge sums were ventured. Santa Anna was the heart and soul of this emporium of disorder and excess. It was something to see him at the fights, surrounded by the money-­ lending potentates, throwing down his bets, taking other people’s money, mingling with minor employees and even with inferior officers; he borrowed money and did not repay it, and the people applauded him as though they were unworthy of such favors. And when the pace flagged, the fairer sex would bestow their smiles and join Santa Anna in his pranks. The cockfights

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Drunkenness, murder, and mayhem as depicted by an anonymous nineteenth-­century Mexican artist. Detail of the painting Ésta es la vida, ca. 1850, Museo Nacional de Arte Moderno, Mexico City.

presented the most repugnant of spectacles, full of those lawless léperos, provocateurs and cheats, shouting, fighting, and always passing around pitchers and bowls of pulque. It was there that Santa Anna would preside. He knew the gamecock from Tlacotalpán and the one from San Antonio el Pelón or Tequixquiápam; he would set the rules for the fight, and check the birds to see that the spurs were fitted right. There were moments when the emcee’s cries, the music, the applause and jeers were overwhelming, when drunkards with roosters under their arms rubbed elbows with the great Supreme Chief. In such surroundings, Santa Anna would laugh and was truly in his glory. . . .

Although these days were full of political events, neither those events nor the commentaries upon them were matters for serious study or even close atten184  Guillermo Prieto

tion. Foreigners saw to their businesses and interests, priests and the faithful clung to their beliefs or so-­called traditions, exploiting the fear of purgatory; and the carriage rolled on, among political movements of lawyers without clients, idle and diffident people, reckless and vicious mobs, all vying, with greater or lesser success, for the spoils of government jobs, usurious lending operations, and other contemptible industries, all seeming to say “I will take from you and give to me. . . . You’ve already eaten, so get out of here, we’re hungry.” Thus, whenever someone spoke of politics to J. Velente Baz, he would say: “Bah! Politics! Politics is like a lousy beanery that’s been invaded by some audacious customers who threaten the hostess with importunings and insults. At the door to this miserable beanery stands a hungry crowd, who at first watch the diners in silent envy, then grow irritable and agitated, then finally drive the diners out and install themselves in their place, sitting down to satisfy their appetites. But they don’t count on the fact that the ones who ate before will return after a while, and the same scene is repeated, for all the same reasons.” Of course, as the scene changes, so does the decor: On one side are crucifixes and candlesticks, three-­cocked hats, counts and marqueses with their retinues of monks, ascetics, confraternities, brotherhoods, etc., etc.; and on the other are the national guardsmen, impromptu heretics, every patriotic booster with his “plan,” and every sans cullotte planning to disembowel monks, kill nuns, clear away the cobwebs of superstition, and declare heaven itself to be national property, exiling the saints, angels and seraphim and converting it into a place of fandangos, drunken sprees, and disorders. So most people shielded themselves from politics as against a virus carried by the inhabitants of the moon. Ladies and gentlemen of business deemed it to their credit to say that they understood nothing of politics, while government employees and military men, with the utmost cynicism, boasted that they would support whoever paid them, putting aside their conscience and their pride. There were newspapers, like the Lima de Vulcano de los Escoseses, edited by Luis Espino, and El Mexicano, by Pablo Sánchez, a military man employed in the Ministry of War . . . ; and yet these were very few, and if one of them had two hundred subscribers they thought it a marvel, which should give an idea of the trends in opinion and of the attention merited by political events. . . . In the dark depths of society, fanaticism ruled in close alliance with soldiers and the old encomenderos-­t urned-­soldiers. Notions of the sciences and social sciences appeared only intermittently in isolated groups, or rather among separate and undistinguished individuals. They were like buried treasures, or fertile seeds locked up in sterile boxes. Knowledge was like wealth held in gold and silver ingots which were owned by a few powerful people, when what was needed was liquid currency—­not a handful of wealthy people, but The Glorious Revolution of 1844  185

many people with money to provide for their urgent needs. . . . It was necessary to divulge knowledge, to turn vast wealth into small change.

While the people sought solace, and while the hero [Santa Anna] surrounded himself with noisy merriment, in very hushed voices people would call their Caesar “the fifteen claws,” a reference to his love of money. In Congress, unnoticed, a determined and conscientious opposition movement took shape, aiming to vindicate rights and honor, among good patriots who would eventually make the glorious revolution of December 6, [1844]. . . . The revolution of December 6, which can be called popular par excellence, which began in the most obscure neighborhoods and spread to the highest levels of society, was, so to speak, prepared, nurtured, and determined by Santa Anna, by a bloody and ridiculous Caesarism, and by that stupid militarism that gave brute force preponderance over the sacred rights of man. And the most remarkable thing was the way those who believed themselves to be men of principle would change their colors at a whim. Although this was due in large part to their great ignorance, it was also due to Santa Anna, who was a Proteus, assuming all shapes and enlisting under all banners, now casually joining the men of aristocracy and privilege, now joining the liberals who proclaimed equality, religious toleration, and the ideas of Farías, without ever properly understanding those ideas. The revelry in the palace, the despotism of satraps, the robbery of the money-­lender, the whore, the gambler . . . all helped to determine that celebrated revolution. Discontent burned in every corner of the country, and the very reticence of the stifled press was like oil that silently ignites a bonfire. [General Valentín] Canalizo, who was Santa Anna’s toy soldier [vice president], authorized all the arbitrary measures, even taking command of the Army in outrageous defiance of the law, ordering that the keys to Congress be confiscated, and demanding that everyone swear obedience to the dictatorial order of November 29, which immediately preceded the coup d’état. Congress adopted a resolute and praiseworthy attitude. The deputies Alas and Llaca made accusations against Canalizo and Santa Anna. Agitation spread violently, the Government employees and soldiers leading the revolt .  .  . the powerful, went through impotent convulsions, and Santa Anna, drunk with power and opulence, persisted in his scorn of the people and in his absurd faith in the use of force. The most notable and visible personages in that revolution . . . had already prepared the operation admirably. The newspaper Siglo XIX could be considered the protagonist of this glorious moment. . . . Canalizo had gagged the press and ordered Congress closed; Santa Anna,

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at the head of the army, issued tyrannical orders, and the most casual happenstance had strong resonance as dawn broke on December 6, the day of the great popular revolution. As soon as he heard of the rebellion, Canalizo, who was bold and reckless, ordered an attack on the [Congressional] Palace, an order that was not carried out thanks to the efficacious mediation of an army officer called Falcón, who, at great risk to his own life, lent a very valuable service. The response inside the [Congressional] Palace was tumultuous. In the immense atrium of San Francisco, men gathered, armed with rifles, fire-­ locks, pistols, and sabers, assuming a warlike attitude. . . . Currents of people swelled by the moment till they covered the ground, swinging to and fro on the streetlight poles. Impudent, wild eyes, bloodthirsty howls and rowdy laughs, straw hats and sparks flying through the air, disheveled hair, indescribable noises, all surging violently amid a moving forest of clubs, rifles, swords, hammers, and who knows what else. Deputies and senators followed, beaming. The rabid crowd went to the theater and quickly demolished the plaster statue erected to Santa Anna. They ran furiously to the Pantheon of Santa Paula and with savage ferocity exhumed Santa Anna’s leg, playing games with it and making it an object of ridicule; then they turned toward the Alameda, and when the gatekeeper stubbornly refused to open the gate, they tore the iron gates up from their foundations and bent them like tree branches felled by a mighty storm. Somehow they toppled the statue of Santa Anna in the Plaza del Volador off of its high column, smashing it on the ground. Around four in the afternoon, in the midst of that inexpressable deluge, deputies and senators began a parade from San Francisco to the [Congressional] Palace. People stood on rooftops and balconies, others ran through the streets, among horses and carriages, steering a course through that turbulent river and drawing near to the fathers of the nation, shouting their names, waving their hats in the air, throwing down flowers. “Look, that pale skinny guy, it’s Llaca.” . . . “Long live Llaca!” . . . “That guy who’s walking half stooped over, who is he?” . . . “He’s the great Pedraza.” . . . “And him?” . . . “Don Luis de la Rosa.” . . . “Long live Alas!” The retinue arrived at the Palace. The crowd scattered in all directions, and an enormous group entered the Chamber, where the deputies and senators took their seats. The people wanted to tear up a large painting depicting Barradas’s surrender in Tampico,1 a work by the painter París, which featured General Santa Anna in the foreground. Llaca opposed this because the painting was a national glory, and the people, with enchanting docility, obeyed and followed him, meek and genial as a fiery horse when it feels its owner’s hand caress its neck.

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At night there were cockfights and parties, unmarred by robberies, fights, and disorder. From Querétaro, Santa Anna cursed the rebels, even while the new Government in Mexico received a hail of letters pledging support. Note 1. A reference to Santa Anna’s defeat of the Spanish, who invaded Tampico under General Isidro Barradas in July 1829. Eds.

188  Guillermo Prieto

Décimas Dedicated to Santa Anna’s Leg Anonymous

The ornate funeral ceremonies that General Santa Anna ordered performed in 1842 for his leg, which was lost fighting the French at the Battle of Veracruz in 1838, are often seen as the culmination of that caudillo’s vainglory and megalomania. After being amputated, the leg spent four years buried at Santa Anna’s hacienda, Manga de Clavo, in the state of Veracruz. When Santa Anna resumed the presidency in late 1841, he had the limb dug up, placed in a crystal vase, and taken amid a full military dress parade to Mexico City, where it was buried beneath an elaborate monument in the cemetery of Santa Paula. The funeral involved cannon salvos, speeches, and poems in the general’s honor. As recounted by Guillermo Prieto in the previous selection, irreverent crowds in 1844 demolished the monument, dug up the leg, and played games with it. Such events provided grist for broadsides known as décimas, predecessors of the popular topical ballads known as corridos. Décimas were often satirical in tone, and they represented a variety of viewpoints. The following décimas present divergent viewpoints on the matter of Santa Anna’s leg.

i. Why should anyone criticize if a funeral is performed for the foot, arm, or hair of an illustrious General? Passions always tarnish merit with malevolence and really do not wish true merit celebrated; So answer quickly and with confidence: Why should we not honor merit in the lifeless limb of a great and heroic caudillo? Why should anyone criticize?

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To make this fitting obsequy to a sacrificed limb—­ not to the man, but to what he has given fearlessly for the Fatherland—­ it would be unjust, ungrateful, foolish and disloyal to claim it is not lawful and right that a lone foot have a tomb or mausoleum, that a funeral is performed. Did Artemisia not hide the ashes of Mausolus1 in her breast and believe this the only remedy? She did her duty. So today Mexico erects a tomb reaching to the sky, covering with ardent hope a jewel of History, and giving glory to the foot, arm or hair. There is a maxim which states a cherished principle: If one kisses the hem of a robe it is because of the Saint who wears it; thus, it is not for the foot itself, on the contrary, though traitors may complain, that we say, for good or ill, “Viva!” and be assured that the people are grateful to an illustrious General.

ii. Nothing in life is permanent, God alone remains, so the things of this world are here today and gone tomorrow. If we search through all of history we will not find a single soul whose triumphs and glory last for all eternity. Even so, our memory 190  Anonymous

of great heroes is eternal; though no one can be constant in their conduct or their lives for until death arrives, nothing in life is permanent. Such may be said of Santa Anna’s foot which was placed in Santa Paula with such solemn pomp and majesty; and today the Mexican populace, after rising in rebellion, full of enthusiasm and zeal, took the foot from the sepulchre; so it is clear that on the earth God alone remains. At that hour and moment the foot’s owner was far away; but around here his foot was walking around with the rebels. It is certain that no one felt any pain from this; but I believe that such an unthinkable act could only have been done by the things of this world. At other times this foot was earnestly respected; but that was when its owner still held us in subjugation; today the people have treated it like a dirty old bone, because the nation no longer wishes to stand for it; because, in the end, good and evil are here today and gone tomorrow. Note 1. Mausolus: Persian satrap who ruled over Caria ca. 376–353 b.c. Known for his personal aggrandizement, he designed a splendid tomb for himself which his wife, Artemisia, built after his death. He thus gave his name to the mausoleum. Eds.

Décimas Dedicated to Santa Anna’s Leg  191

A Conservative Profession of Faith The Editors of El Tiempo

Even before it was fought, the war between the United States and Mexico would become the crucible for Mexican nationhood. As Mexico moved ever closer to war, Liberals and Conservatives, both painfully aware of Mexico’s centrifugal tendencies, its chronic debility, its poverty, and its political paralysis, groped for explanations. For Conservatives, the problem was quite simply republicanism, an insidious virus that had infected the national organism and weakened the noble Hispanic legacy of monarchism and Roman Catholicism. El Tiempo was the most important newspaper of conservatism, and its editorial board included the most illustrious Conservatives of the mid-nineteenth century. In the following excerpt, written February 12, 1846, two months before the outbreak of the war—­a time of high tensions—­the newspaper’s editors eloquently and succinctly stake out their position. We promised to publish a complete and explicit manifesto of our political principles. We shall now fulfill our promise. . . . We believe that our independence was a grand and glorious feat, and also a necessary and inevitable one. When kingdoms and provinces which are far from the metropolis reach a certain level of development and growth, when the culture has created interests and the capacity to govern, then the time has come to loosen the ties that bind the young nations to the more ancient and advanced ones, which, like mothers, gave them their education and strength, initiating them into the life of civilization. So independence had to come sooner or later, and though ten years of cruel wars could not secure it, a military movement of seven months in 1821 was enough to make the words of Iguala the country’s banner. Why? Because the guarantees contained in that plan united all spirits, all sympathies; because the clergy, the army, and the people were assured of a future full of glory and prosperity for the fatherland. That is why many Spanish priests, military men, and merchants remained in Mexico, performing their tasks and services; that is why this important revolution was not consumed by blood and ruin, and why independence united so many sentiments. It was because the general welfare was considered, and

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because the ties that bound past and present and future were loosened but not broken. The Plan of Iguala was not carried out. Iturbide wished to create a dynasty for his own benefit; and this empire, lacking foundation, lacking legitimacy, lacking respect for time and tradition, fell into ruins at the first revolutionary stirrings. The lamentable tragedy that took Iturbide’s life, took from the fatherland a faithful servant who was misled by inexperience and dazzled by flattery. The United States then began to build an empire of a different sort in Mexico: its books and ideas, the promises made by its representatives, the fraudulent spectacle of its prosperity, dragged our noble trustful nature down new and dangerous roads. Republican ideas took control of the nation’s destiny, and were formulated into government. We then started down this fatal path upon which we still walk. Overlooking our differences of origin, of religion, and of history; without considering that our social, political, and religious unity made us best suited for the monarchical form of government—­just as the Americans are suited for republicanism and federalism by their diversity of cults, peoples, and languages—­we believed that the quickest way to assure political liberty was to throw ourselves into the arms of the United States, servilely imitating its institutions and slavishly following its perfidious advice. Thus, the absurd constitution of 1824 was written, and the American representative1 founded, in the name of liberty, secret societies which tyrannized and destroyed the country. The treasury was disorganized, administration was ruined. We should have had enough resources to satisfy all of our ambitions, but the people’s wealth was squandered, and we began to contract increasingly ruinous loans. The nation was weakened by the expulsion of the peaceful and hardworking Spaniards, along with their Mexican families and the immense wealth that they possessed. Civil liberty was drowned amid continuous revolts, which turned a disciplined and long-suffering army into a tool of ambition and anarchy. Presidents and Congresses fell before bloody revolutions. From that time, civil war in the countryside and disorder in the cities practically became our normal state. Meanwhile, barbarous Indians dared to pillage our territory with impunity, and the United States grabbed Texas and prepared to usurp California. This description is not exaggerated: official documents, speeches by the country’s representatives, articles in the newspapers—­a ll present a much grimmer picture of our situation. So, what do we now contemplate? What is the situation within and outside of the country? An administration disorganized, a treasury lost, enormous debts that consume us, revenues pledged to our creditors, the soldier begging the usurer for his scant subsistence, justice neglected, barbarians threatening the borders of

A Conservative Profession of Faith  193

our civilization, Yucatán emancipated, the United States occupying our territory; and all this without a navy with which to defend our coasts, and without the power to allocate the resources that our valiant army would need to expel the zealous invaders from the nation’s soil. And what about overseas? Our reputation in Europe is lost; one is accustomed to hearing about the perpetual scandal of our revolutions, and we are seen as a nation condemned to the fate of the turbulent and semi-­barbarous republics of the South, or one destined to be the prisoner and slave of the federation of the North. This country, so rich in natural resources, no longer has credit in any market; and the instability of our governments discredits our institutions, obstructing any political alliance that we might establish in Europe to help us resist invasions from the United States. No nation will sign treaties with the unfortunate republics of Spanish America, which are condemned by fate to wallow in anarchy and convulsion; where diplomacy is impossible, secrets impracticable; where neither treasons nor guarantees exist or can exist within its precarious governments. Very well, then. We know this sad situation and, unlike many others, we do not try to deceive our country. Since the Mexican nation has the greatest elements of grandeur and prosperity of any nation in the world, and since men here, like men everywhere, are made by education, institutions, and habits, we do not believe and do not repeat the vulgar notion that we are incapable of political existence, or that we cannot govern ourselves. We believe that republican institutions have brought us to a state close to despair and prostration, just as they would have done to Spain, England, and France. We believe that at the present time we are not merely heading for ruin, demoralization, and anarchy; we are approaching the complete dissolution of the nation, and the loss of our territory, our name, and our independence. Holland, France, England have, in bygone epochs, experimented with republicanism, and, in order to survive, they shook off that political form with disgust and fear, for it undermined their existence just as it does ours. In those countries, republican revolutions left glorious, if not prosperous, memories. Holland freed itself from the Spanish yoke and built up a navy. England, under the iron-­fisted administration of Cromwell, conquered Dunkirk and Jamaica. France made Europe tremble, and in its revolutionary delirium brought its tricolored banner triumphantly to Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. The three nations, nonetheless, were consumed by internal divisions, and they sought the remedy for their ills in monarchy. Today these brilliant and fertile civilizations enjoy all the benefits of liberty and order, and they see their vain utopias as a foolish delirium: the republican parties no longer exist; they are dead. Where are the educated men who still proclaim republican doctrines in those free countries? But if the republic could not take root in those countries, then what will 194  The Editors of El Tiempo

become of Mexico, where we have experienced nothing but humiliation and disaster? Instead of conquering foreign territories, the eternal dissensions of our republic have caused us to lose Texas and Yucatán,2 both of which pertained to Mexico when we began our independence. Every day, instead of triumphing over our enemies, we are threatened with the loss of more territory: the French flag has waved over Ulúa and Veracruz, the American stars float above the Río Bravo [or Rio Grande, as it is known in the United States]. The republic has created nothing, it has destroyed everything; and our proud national character chafes at the impotence to which our great country has been reduced. We repeat that it is for this reason that we believe the republic has been a costly experiment, a harsh warning; but it might still be remedied. Now, if you ask what we want and desire, we will say it frankly. We want Representative Monarchy; we want National Unity; we want order along with political and civil liberty; we want the integrity of Mexican territory; we want, in the end, all of the promises and guarantees of the Plan of Iguala, in order to ensure that our glorious independence has stable foundations. If the most advanced and civilized countries of the world have, after lengthy convulsions, adopted a certain form of government, then that form of government is suitable for us. It is what the army at Iguala and its heroic caudillo promised would lead to our happiness and prevent our destruction; it is toward this that we wish to move; it is what we long for, what we defend. We want a regimen of government in which justice is administered with impartiality, because it is independent of all parties; in which the government has the stability and strength to protect society, and where the laws, respected by everyone, guarantee the rights of all citizens. We want a regimen in which chambers are elective and royal power is hereditary, in order to ensure both political liberty and to maintain the existing order. We want an order of things that regularizes commerce, protects industry, develops the intellectual activity of the nation, and in whose ordered hierarchy all eminent men shall have a place. We want what exists in all of the respected monarchies of Europe, where there is no aristocracy other than one of merit, skill, education, wealth, and military and civil service; where a man is asked not who his parents are, but what he has done to make himself worthy of positions and honors. We want a strong and vigorous army that can cover itself with laurels by nobly defending its country, in which military hierarchies are respected and those who shed their blood for the fatherland receive the consideration they are due; we want that army to win victories overseas; and we want the soldier to be assured of a comfortable and stable retirement after his difficult life, not the abandonment and misery with which revolutions reward his services. We want decorous and dignified support for the Catholic cult of our fathers, not the anarchy that continually threatens Church property. We were A Conservative Profession of Faith  195

born into the bosom of the Church, and we do not wish to see the cathedrals of our religion become temples of those sects that scandalize the world with their religious complaints; nor do we wish to see the hateful starry banner flying from their towers. We want a representative monarchy that can protect the distant regions as well as those nearby, defend them against the assaults of savages, and extend the borders of civilization that are besieged by barbarism. We want a stable government that inspires confidence in Europe, making possible overseas alliances that might help us to resist the United States, if it persists in trying to destroy our nationality. All of the legal parties can find a place around this banner, so long as they wish to see the independence and liberty of the country affirmed; so long as they want our sad and unfortunate fatherland to become the premier nation of America. We have faith in our country’s future, in its aggrandizement; and we do not believe that so vast, so rich, and so privileged a territory must always be prisoner to dissolution and anarchy. But we do not want reaction of any sort. Conservatives of conviction and character, we ask protection for all interests regardless of their origin. It is madness to believe that a prince of royal blood should come to Mexico to establish a dynasty with the support of foreign governments. Such a thing could have happened three centuries ago, but it cannot happen today, especially in a country with representative government. We do not want a single job or a single military rank that is not in Mexican hands: whoever hopes to bring stability to our country must be supported only by the army and by the Mexican people. We have completed our profession of Faith. It is at last clear and complete. Convinced that our ideas are the only ones that can save the nation, we sustain them with decorum and civility, but also with determination and energy. We are not at all disturbed by the calumnies which always follow those who fight against disorder, prejudice, and abuse: we scorn the calumniators and we carry on our work without fear. What is certain is that we will never be accomplices of foreign ambition, and, in our newspaper, the stars of the United States will never eclipse the colors of our national flag. Notes 1. A reference to Joel Poinsett, the first American ambassador to Mexico, who helped to found the liberal York Rite Masonic Lodge, and whose views on Mexicans appear in this volume’s first section. Eds. 2. Following the example of Texas and repelled by Santa Anna’s highly centralist Constitution of 1836, the remote state of Yucatán, which had always had tenuous relations with Mexico, declared its independence in 1840. It rejoined Mexico in 1843, then separated again in 1845, but reunited with Mexico permanently in 1848, while in the throes of a bloody race war. Eds.

196  The Editors of El Tiempo

Considerations relating to the Political and Social Situation of the Mexican Republic in the Year 1847 Mariano Otero

Liberals had their own explanations for Mexico’s woes. Whereas the Conservatives felt that Mexico had grown weak to the extent that it had deviated from the examples of its mother country, Liberals insisted that many of the unfortunate remnants of the colonial system were to blame. Mexico, if it were to prosper, would have to make itself more, not less, like the “modern” nations of the world. Undoubtedly one of the most eloquent and unflinching spokesmen for the Liberal view was Mariano Otero (1817–50). Otero was widely read in political philosophy. He served in the national Congress and, for a brief time, in the cabinet of President José Joaquín Herrera as secretary of the interior and of foreign relations. Like the editors of El Tiempo, Otero was staunchly nationalistic and eager to find a solution to Mexico’s continuing vulnerability. Yet unlike those Conservatives, he found his country’s weakness had less to do with the particular system in place (that is, a monarchy vs. a republic) than with the realities of the social and psychological makeup of Mexico and Mexicans. The fact that a foreign army of ten or twelve thousand men should have penetrated from Veracruz to the very capital of the republic; the fact that, with the exception of the bombarding of that port, the action at Cerrogordo,1 and the minor encounters that it had with Mexican troops in the immediate environs of the capital, this army has not found enemies with whom to fight—­ while it has swept across three of the most important and populous states of the Mexican federation, states with more than two million inhabitants—­ these facts assume such proportions that they cannot but give rise to the most serious reflections. Petty-­m inded men, those who judge events solely on the occurrences themselves, usually fall into serious error. For this reason it is not strange that, as we have already seen in some foreign journals, the Mexican people

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have been characterized as an effeminate people, a degenerate race that does not know how to govern or to defend itself. But the man of thought . . . cannot consider the Mexican republic in its present sad situation to be composed of a people who suffer from defective origins through the effeminacy or degradation of their race but rather of a people who have been the victims of a defective education and a worse organization. From this point of view, we believe that Mexico, far from deserving the deprecation and mockery of the other nations, merits, if not the assistance which as a nation it might hope for from the other nations of the world in the name of universal justice, at least the sympathy which any good heart should feel toward a nation that sustains a just cause. . . . We will not exhaust ourselves in useless protestations. . . . Instead, let a simple account of the component parts that make up the nation suffice to explain its present situation. . . . We might calculate the population as reaching seven million, of whom, according to the least exaggerated reports, four million are Indians and three million Europeans, mixed, for the most part, with the indigenous strain. The Indians are spread throughout the entire territory of the republic, grouped in small communities and forming really a family apart from the white and mixed races. The miserable way of life of the Indians today differs little or not at all from what it was when they were subjects of the great emperor Montezuma. . . . Neither in the time of the viceroys nor later, after independence, has there been adopted an adequate system of education for this race, an education which would on the one hand improve the condition of the individual, raising him from the brutalized state in which he exists, and on the other hand make him useful to society. Neither early nor late have these people been taught anything more than to fear God, the priest, and the mayor, and the ignorance in which they live is such that perhaps three quarters of the Indians have not yet received the news of the attainment of national independence. That they remain in this error is all the more credible in view of the fact that in many places they are still charged tribute for the king of Spain in the same spirit in which they are asked for donations for the ransoming of captives and for the holy places of Jerusalem. The work that they are generally put to is cultivating the earth for a small daily stipend, and since this pay is not always sufficient to cover the costs of their sad existence, they often ask the owner of the hacienda on which they work for wages in advance to be paid back by their labor, thus obliging them to stay put until they have paid their debt. . . . In addition, there is a system which so happily prevails among the Mexican clergy by which, while the so-­called higher clergy and bishops live opulently in the capital, the parish priests find that their very survival depends upon the income from their parish rights. For this reason, these representatives of the God of goodness and mercy make it a point not to allow any Indian to be 198  Mariano Otero

born, to marry, or to die with impunity, that is, without paying the established rights. In this way, the parish priests take their cut from the scant resources that the Indians count on for their livelihood. Those Indians who live close to the great population centers go to them to sell vegetables, poultry, firewood, coal, and other such goods which fetch them a small price, but even this paltry sum is further reduced by the cut taken at the city gate by collectors who, in the name of the nation, commit against these people the most infamous and repugnant extortions. To put the finishing touch on this canvas, which faithfully portrays the sadness of Indian life, we need but add that the only active part that the Indians take in the public life of the country is to serve as soldiers in the army, a role which is forced upon them. And in this capacity, rather than serving their country, they act as instruments for the aggrandizement of their officers, who in times of peace give them little bread but a big stick (poco pan y mucho palo) and in war often abandon them at the moment of danger. For all these reasons, it is easy to understand why this important sector of the population has no interest in preserving an order of things of which it is the victim. Certainly the Indians have watched the entrance of the North American army with the same indifference with which they watched in the past the Spanish armies taking dominion of the country, and with the same calm with which, after independence, they have watched the comings and goings of our troops engaged in continual revolutions. Without any further necessities than those demanded by their semi-­savage level of existence, without relationships or pleasures of any kind which might arise out of a contact with society, with neither interests nor affections that tie them to it, and with the confidence that their abject condition could not be worsened, they look upon all that might happen with the most apathetic indifference. We shall now proceed to examine the three million inhabitants of European or mixed descent who comprise the populations of the capitals and other cities and towns of importance in the republic. . . . With the exception of about three hundred thousand men, the top figure for those employed in agriculture, industry, mining, business, and certain trades and offices, the nine hundred thousand remaining account for the unproductive classes, such as the clergy with all of its subordinates and dependents, the military, the bureaucracy, lawyers, doctors, and finally that multitude of loafers and vagabonds that abounds in the main cities of the republic. From this unexaggerated estimate, we might judge the sad situation that afflicts that quarter of the population which works and produces and therefore must necessarily support the other three quarters. What an enormous disproportion! Here is the origin of the backwardness and discouragement encumbering all sources of the national wealth. Here is sufficient cause for the destruction of the nascent Mexican republic; indeed, it would suffice to destroy the most flourishing nation on earth! . . . Political and Social Situation  199

There is little good to be said about the standing of those Mexicans who dedicate themselves to the skills and trades. Unfortunately, there still persists among us the error inherited from the Spaniards who, with their lofty notions of chivalry and nobility, taught us to look down upon any man who follows a trade. To be a man of respectability it was necessary to be a military man, a government official, a clergyman, a lawyer, or at least a doctor. All others in society were considered to be the inferior classes, and even businessmen were looked upon with contempt, being referred to as rag dealers. As a result of such ridiculous, not to say pernicious ideas, no father of any means, however moderate, wanted, nor still does want, his sons to learn a trade. He would even be ashamed to apprentice them to a commercial house or to any other business, because the idea of serving a master, as the saying goes, whether in a workshop or in a store, would seem to him to be a very denigrating thing. This concern about status reaches such a proportion that many artisans who have lived decent and honorable lives in their trades, far from teaching them to their sons, put them in a college to learn law or medicine; or, as soon as they get out of school knowing something of reading, writing, and arithmetic, they try to get some influential person to prevail upon the government to bestow upon [their] sons a civil or military post. . . . There are many fathers also who, before apprenticing their sons to any trade, would prefer that they had no profession at all and would abandon them to the fate of searching out their livelihood in any way that God might give them to understand, but without, of course, giving up their status as gentlemen—­hombres decentes—­that is to say, without working at any job that might dishonor them, because for this class of men working itself is dishonorable, and they do not think that this is true of spending their entire lives as vagabonds and swindlers. And so it has come about that, while the republic is plagued by hundreds of generals, thousands of superintendents and officials, bureaucrats, clergymen, and doctors, one cannot find a single distinguished Mexican in any art, skill, or trade: and it is certain that, in any of the important population centers, the best architect, the most able painter, the best sculptor, the best carriage maker, the most intelligent upholsterer, the most painstaking cabinet maker, and even the best cobbler will turn out not to be a Mexican but a foreigner. This is a truth all the more sad when one considers that there is no lack of ability among the Mexicans and that they are even famous for their skills in making fine reproductions. . . . In view of this simple and true account of the state in which the productive classes—­the smallest part of the Mexican republic—­fi nd themselves, it is easy to understand the sense of permanent malaise in which they live. And this, in turn, sufficiently explains the detachment and indifference with which these classes, on the whole, have looked upon the present war through which the republic is suffering. Say what one might, patriotism, that noble 200  Mariano Otero

and chivalrous sentiment which in other countries moves the people and raises them to such a pitch of fervor that they would a thousand times prefer death to permitting the slightest offense against their country—­that sentiment cannot exist in a country without education and in one which has been lacerated by thirty-­seven years of travail and misery. . . . The men who have figured in the directing of our public affairs have shown neither the proper science nor the consciousness of the great duties imposed upon them by the high posts that their ambitions have elevated them to. None of them have shown the least concern for the removal of those strong obstacles to the welfare and happiness of the nation. All of this is very natural in a country where men never ascend to power through the free vote of the citizenry but are always placed there either through intrigues on the part of one or another faction or, as is often the case, by revolutionary action on the part of the armed forces. This system, certainly original in a republic, of presenting the people with their rulers without first consulting them and obtaining their consent, has necessarily resulted in the emergence of picked officials whose least concern is with the welfare of the people. It could not be otherwise in view of the fact that the parties, which represent this or that special interest, do not seek in their candidates independent men devoted to the general interest of the country but rather men who will adhere strictly to the special interests of [their] party. Accordingly, these same men in taking power feel obligated to honor their commitment to serve faithfully the party that elevated them to office. For these reasons we have seen that some governments have decidedly protected the army, others the clergy, others the bureaucrats, and some others all three classes at once. However, there has never been a government which has put a brake on the pretensions of the privileged classes while reforming or destroying their abuses. None has dedicated itself to the protection of the industrious classes which most merit the attention of any government that would be enlightened or patriotic. For these classes there has been nothing but pompous promises which have never been fulfilled. In order to discredit the government which they have wanted to overthrow, factions in revolt have hurled charges to the effect that this government has not protected industry or commerce. . . . One would have to concede that such a system, practiced for twenty-­six years, could only bring about the most profound disgust between the industrious classes and their governments. What bonds or sympathies could possibly exist between these classes and the various governments, considering that the latter, instead of lending them some support, have burdened them daily with more taxes of all kinds in order to satisfy the ambitions of thousands of men of the privileged classes who, with no decent title to it, have proposed to live at the expense of the nation? None, certainly. . . . Political and Social Situation  201

As the inevitable result of so many cruel and repeated deceptions, [the productive classes] are now in a state of mortal discouragement. This being the case, could anyone maintain that they should now go on to sacrifice what remains of their fortunes as well as their very lives for their country? And in defense of what? . . . To these definite considerations, which should certainly suffice to explain, at least to enlightened men, the apathy which has characterized most members of the industrious classes during the present war, should be added the observation that the United States Army has not [spread] terror and death everywhere, robbing or destroying property, violating women, and, in short, perpetrating all kinds of crimes against the conquered populace. On the contrary . . . the American army, sustaining itself on its own resources and paying good prices for whatever it needed for its subsistence, has respected private property. No peaceful Mexican has been persecuted. Everyone has been allowed to continue working freely in his trade or occupation. And finally, far from oppressing the people with heavy taxes, the American army has considerably reduced import duties in the occupied ports, and in the cities and towns of the interior; [moreover,] it has abolished the customs houses and tax-­collecting stations which had formerly vexed and harassed all who sought their livelihoods in the mercantile trades. . . . Can it be demanded of the property-­owning and industrious Mexicans that they bring about their own ruin or even death in defense of those same abuses of which they are the victims? . . . And yet, despite all these reasons cited, the industrious classes of Mexico have, in fact, given no little proof of the extent to which they esteem the honor and good name of their country. . . . It now remains for us to consider the three classes which are the true masters of the country: the army, the clergy, and the government bureaucracy. Since these are the only groups that have enjoyed its privileges and have decreed, according to their whims, its fate, it would seem that they should have taken on the present battle as a personal cause, being well persuaded that in any new and enlightened order of things all those abuses by which they have lived up until now would, undoubtedly, be swept away. However, in examining the particular modus of these classes among themselves, we shall see that—­a lthough they have been very potent in imposing upon the country a static condition, heading it in the direction of total ruin—­they have been utterly without force when it has come to uniting against a foreign invasion, convinced though they must be that that thrust will be more fatal to them than to the rest of the country. . . . We will start with the army because this class is the most immediately responsible for the loss of national honor, for whose defense this same army has been continually maintained at a cost to the country of millions of pesos in the twenty-­six years that have elapsed from independence to the present. 202  Mariano Otero

We have said elsewhere that the soldiers, in general, are Indians, forcibly made to serve, and we have also observed that these Indians have little or no conception of nationality, and no interest whatever in maintaining an order of things in which they figure only as beasts of burden. Nevertheless, it must be truthfully said that as soldiers they are really quite good, because—­aside from not being cowards—­they have great endurance in the campaign. They have shown that they can cross hundreds of leagues over bad roads, barefoot, badly clothed and worse fed, and this without complaining or committing any notable act of insubordination. Without doubt, if these same Indians were led by officers with good training and some sensibility, they would be as good as the soldiers of any other country. The trouble, therefore, with the Mexican army is not with the soldiers but with the officers, who, with a few and honorable exceptions, are assuredly the most ignorant and demoralized on earth. Nor could it be otherwise, when the attainment of military rank among us has nothing to do with competence or valor but rather with appointments based on the most contemptible favoritism. From the time in which we gained our independence, a multitude of obscure and ignorant men have been presenting themselves to the new government, alleging the important services and immense sacrifices that they are supposed to have made in defense of the national cause, and asking to be given, in recompense for these services, high military posts. . . . In this way men were brought into the army who had had no previous experience of military service and were absolutely ignorant of the art of war and therefore worthless in terms of the careers they were presumed to be following. Later, the abuse of handing out military posts reached such a point of scandal that any Mexican who would consent to remain a peasant would seem to be positively admirable, so easy had it become for anyone who wanted a military post to get one. Above all, during twenty years of this kind of thing, the favorite occupation of the army has been, with but a few intervals, the making of revolution. Consequently, the disorder within the military has reached its culmination. Every new government, elevated to power through a military revolt—­as they all have been—­has felt obliged to immediately reward that part of the army which installed it, and thus preferments are awarded to all the leaders and officers of that faction. On the other hand, the government that was about to fall had given new posts to the other part of the army that had remained faithful to it before its fall. These last-­m inute promotions have always been recognized by the new government in order to keep everybody happy. In this way, each revolution has resulted in a swelling of the officer corps and at the same time in a new wave of promotions for those officers already in grade. In the light of this, it should not appear at all strange that those farces known as pronunciamientos should recur so frequently, because it is clear that by this route a former second lieutenant, for example, who has Political and Social Situation  203

taken part in six consecutive revolutions, will undoubtedly have made it to the rank of general. . . . As a consequence of so much disorder and also of the facile appointments and promotion of officers, it is not surprising that one can hardly find, although there are hundreds of generals, thousands of colonels, lieutenant colonels, commanders, and so forth, a single general in whom one would confide the command of a small division, because many of them do not even know the rudiments of the art of war, and they would be in a dilemma should they be put in charge of a company on patrol. Also, one could count on the fingers of the hand the number of colonels in whom one could trust the command of a single regiment in combat; and finally, as for junior officers, there are very few good ones because, along with their other defects, they are given to insubordination, which makes them useless for any sort of service. One is forced to conclude that such an army, when faced with its first national war against a foreign army that is at least tolerably well organized, is bound to play the same ridiculous role that was played by the pope’s soldiers before the armies of Napoleon. It is not in the least difficult to count the number of defeats which our army has suffered in the present war. One has only to know beforehand how many engagements it has had with the enemy, because each battle has been a defeat, with some of the skirmishes lasting only a few minutes. But, however disgraced our military has been at arms, it has not been sparing in giving out proclamations, manifestos, and explanations to the public, because, on the “literary” side, our army surely has no equal in the world. There are generals who have felt called upon to issue a proclamation upon taking charge of their troops. This has been followed by another proclamation each time they have passed through a city or town en route. They even make proclamations, upon getting out of bed in the morning, to their valiant comrades in arms. . . . This total lack of truth and justice naturally discourages all good officers, or perhaps converts them into bad ones because in the present scheme of things even the basic motives for human action are missing: the hope of reward and the fear of punishment. Furthermore, in all well-­organized societies an officer knows that should he die in battle his family, at least, will be taken care of by the government, and if he should be incapacitated he can count on a soldier’s home where he can pass the rest of his life comfortably and decently. In Mexico these things do not obtain. Though a veterans’ institution and a pension fund for military widows exist in name, any incapacitated veteran can be sure that he will perish, at the end, in utter poverty, after having begged for his subsistence from public charity. If, on the other hand, he is killed in action, his family will without doubt be the victims of misery or of the prostitution which is

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its consequence, and his cadaver will serve as meat for the birds and animals because frequently, if not always, it is allowed to remain stretched out on the field of battle without anyone taking the trouble to bury it. . . . Let us go on now to examine the situation of the clergy, in whose hands resides the largest portion of the property of the republic—­a fact which accounts for the great and baneful influence the clergy has exercised upon society. In view of this vast ownership, it would seem only natural that the clergy would ardently defend the nation or, more precisely, these same properties, being persuaded that any other even half-­enlightened government that establishes itself in the country must necessarily despoil it of all these immense holdings and reduce it to the simple exercise of its purely spiritual mission upon earth. The clergy should be the more determined to resist with all its capacities the advance of the enemy forces because this army represents a people for which the absolute toleration of various religions forms the very basis of its social system. This being so, it is evident that should Mexico succumb in the fight the clergy here would have to fear the loss not only of its material interests but also of that sole and absolute power which it has exercised without opposition in a country in which no other religion but theirs is tolerated. In view of all this, the blind self-­centeredness which the clergy has shown in a cause that one would have thought to have been its very own would seem inexplicable were it not for two considerations. The first of these is the very ignorance of the individuals involved, by which they have shown themselves to be incapable of comprehending the difficult times in which they are living, being unable to foresee the dire consequences which lie in store for them as a result of the stupidity and egotism of their present conduct. Secondly, and more importantly, one must consider the inequality that exists within this privileged class itself, by which a small minority lives surrounded by the greatest abundance while the rest are left with hardly enough to sustain themselves in a decent manner. One has only to survey the disproportion that exists among the various groups making up the clergy in order to substantiate the exactness of these observations. The Mexican clergy consists of bishops and canons, curates and vicars, private clerics or chaplains, and members of religious orders—­of both sexes. The bishops and canons, who make up what is known as the high clergy, are supported by tithes. Although the income from this source has been reduced a good deal since the workers have been relieved of the obligation to pay them, it is still a considerable sum. . . . In the great cities such as Mexico City, Puebla, Guadalajara, Querétaro, Orizaba, and others, there is a multitude of clergy who are quite useless, and in these same cities the bishops and canons lead comfortable and even sumptuous lives, remote from all inconveniences and enjoying all the pleasures that riches can provide. In contrast, those who

Political and Social Situation  205

really give a service to religion, the curates and vicars, with rare exceptions, must endure lives overburdened with work and destitute, sometimes to the point of sheer misery. . . . The parish priests suffer all kinds of privations, being constantly on call and having to travel long distances to say mass and dispense the sacraments in remote places. Sunday, the day of rest for all others, is their heaviest day. Yet for all this travail they receive only the donations that might be forthcoming from the faithful for baptisms, weddings, funerals, and so forth. As observance of these sacraments is on the decline, so too is the livelihood of the poor parish priests. . . . As for the bureaucrats, their history is very similar to that of the military. Amidst the perpetual disorder and dissolution of our governments, nevertheless, public jobs continue to be handed out in great profusion—­perhaps to truckle to this or that personage who has made a recommendation or maybe to reward the slightest service given to one of the people in government. Seldom, or very rarely, is there an effort to establish the honesty or capacity of the person being considered for a job, but what is certainly taken into account is whether the recommender has some degree of influence. Once this is established, the applicant is, of course, given a position—­w ithout further inquiry. There are also many cases of important jobs being obtained through the donation of money to those who have access to the government and enjoy its favor. The result of this facile manner of handing out jobs is that there are many people in public employment who cannot handle the grammar of their own language or do simple arithmetic, nor can they write at even a medium level of proficiency. As for morality, the examples are as many as they are scandalous of employees who have made tremendous fortunes, abusing the confidence which the government has so ineptly reposed in them. Corruption of this kind has become so well established and generally accepted—­even in society—­that nobody is scandalized to see a public employee who earns an annual salary of between two or three thousand pesos buy himself haciendas, furnish his townhouse with the most exquisite and costly appointments, and generally maintain his family at an extravagant level of luxury. None of this attracts any attention because such cases are innumerable, and the public has become accustomed to seeing that all employees—­w ith very few exceptions—­who have any access to public funds spend three or four times more than they earn. Despite this scandalous corruption and ineptitude on the part of most bureaucrats, the government, even if it wants to, is powerless to remedy the situation. According to the laws of the republic, the employee who is given a government office acquires in the act of being hired a property, which nobody, not even the government itself, can deprive him of without establishing just cause. The posing of this condition, given the way justice is administered 206  Mariano Otero

in the country, is tantamount to declaring that the bureaucrats can do anything they want, secure in the knowledge that nothing will dislodge them from their jobs. . . . Moreover, a dismissed employee, no matter how justified the government might have been in discharging him, is always well received by the opposite party, whose newspapers immediately begin a clamor against the horrible attempt on the part of the government to attack the employee’s property without respect for due process of law. The government accused of taking such an action is branded as arbitrary, despotic, and tyrannical. . . . From the above it would seem that the best office one could aspire to in Mexico would be that of government employee, and in effect these employees would have veritable sinecures if it were not for the fact that their very excess in number jeopardizes their situation as a group. In those countries that boast some kind of order, the number of employees hired corresponds to the number needed for specific offices; but in Mexico, where everything tends to go in reverse, the offices are created to accommodate the employees. . . . For all these reasons, it can be seen that in this class of government employees, as with the military and the clergy, there does not exist, nor can there exist, an esprit de corps. Consequently, although this group is potentially strong enough to put a great deal of pressure upon society, it does not have the incentive to promote its individual interests by resort to concerted action, not even in defense of the very abuses upon which it thrives. We have now brought to a conclusion this sad description of the state in which all classes of society in the republic now find themselves. . . . To discover that we have been guilty of error would indeed be cause for celebration, because we are, after all, Mexicans and would like nothing better than to see our fatherland happy and respected throughout the world; but we cannot indulge in illusions, and we do not believe that, in the picture we have traced of our society, we have told anything but those truths which nobody can deny, because they are visible to all who, free of emotional bias or delusion, are willing to see the reality of things. Therefore, it seems utterly useless for foreign writers to seek feverishly such explanations as the feminization or degradation of the Mexican race in order to account for the indifference which this nation has shown toward the present war. It is equally ridiculous for Mexicans to engage in mutual recrimination over what has happened. For our part, we believe that everything is to be explained in these few words: in mexico there is not, nor is there

a possibility of developing a national spirit, because there is no nation. In effect, if a nation cannot call itself such without having all the

elements that make for its happiness and well-being internally while being at the same time respected abroad, then Mexico cannot properly call itself a nation. It is useless to point out that the Mexican Republic possesses an immense Political and Social Situation  207

territory of more than [840,000 square miles], bathed by two great oceans, with a multitude of navigable rivers, with the most varied climates in which all the fruits of the globe can be produced, with virgin territories whose astonishing fertility gives the farmer practically a 100 percent yield; where, as a culmination to the special bounty bestowed upon this land, there are great hills and mountains loaded with the most precious metals. All of this only serves to prove that this country has all the natural elements to make up a great and happy nation and that in the passage of time, on this very ground that we now tread upon, there will be a people who will without doubt occupy one of the prime positions among the most rich and powerful nations of the earth. But as long as fanaticism, ignorance, and laziness continue being the basis of our education and as long as we do not have a government which is truly enlightened and energetic, taking all the measures necessary to ensure the advancement of this society, the Mexican people, although treading on gold and silver, will be a weak and unfortunate people and will continue to present to the world the humiliating spectacle of a beggar emaciated by misery and hunger, living in a beautiful palace full of gold and all types of riches which he does not know how to make use of, not even for his own well-­being and happiness. Note 1. The Battle of Cerro Gordo was fought on April 18, 1847, near Xalapa, Veracruz. The U.S. forces, led by General Winfield Scott, overcame the Mexican forces of Santa Anna. Eds.

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Liberals and the Land Luis González y González

Following the war with the United States and several more years of turmoil, a new, younger generation of Liberals, including Ignacio Comonfort, Miguel Lerdo de Tejada, and Benito Juárez, came to power determined to enact sweeping reforms that they hoped would propel their country headlong into the modern world. After seizing power in the Revolution of Ayutla (1854)—­which overthrew Santa Anna for the last time—­they immediately issued a series of decrees that came to be known collectively as “La Reforma” (the period of Reform), which would have long-­range, and some dire, consequences. Among other things, they sought to transform Mexico’s agriculture. Their failure to realize their dream of creating an enterprising, modern, scientific countryside, as we shall see, would be a major factor in the genesis of the Mexican revolution of 1910. In the following selection, Luis González y González (1925–2003), one of Mexico’s most eminent twentieth-­century social historians, explains the problems the Liberals sought to overcome, what they hoped to accomplish, and why, in the end, they failed. The creed of the Reform was defined on the same day the insurgents of Ayutla began calling themselves “Liberals,” and the paladins of the Santa Anna dictatorship Conservatives and “crabs.” That creed borrowed, in true Mexican style, from the fetishes and phobias of European and North American liberalism: the will to riches, freedom, order, democracy, and science, and an end to tradition. It also featured a pair of purely national dogmas. One, formulated by Miguel Lerdo in 1856, held that “Mexico’s soil is some of the most fertile in the world.” The other, in the words of don José María Vigil, maintained that “we Mexicans are unable to effectively exploit the physical and material gifts with which we have been blessed.” Behind our natural greatness we glimpse the work of Providence; in our human failings, the work of History. . . . While similar governments of Europe heroically resisted the temptation to meddle in rural matters, ours undertook to convert virgin lands into fertile fields, miserable landless peasants into prosperous landowners, victims of peonage into free people, and slaves of myth into men of positive science. The reformers divided the agrarian problem into several parts. In the technical sphere, they lamented the shortage of labor to cultivate the land, 209

One of the great estates that was consolidated following the breakup of communal lands by nineteenth-­century liberal legislation, Hacienda Blanca Flor would become one of southeastern Mexico’s highly profitable henequen (sisal hemp) haciendas by 1870. After insurgents captured it during the Mexican revolution, the estate fell into ruin and disrepair. As seen in this ca. 1990 photo, the jungle has retaken the grounds, and the chapel’s roof has caved in. The hacienda’s fortunes may be on the rise, however, as in recent years it has been transformed into a luxury hotel. Photograph by Michael Calderwood, from Mexico: A Higher Vision (La Jolla, CA: Alti, 1990), 41.

the rudimentary use of fertilizer and irrigation, the backwardness of cultivation, the felling of woods, the lack of capital, and the rickety means of communication and transportation. In the institutional sphere, they decried the abundance of unused land, the Indian communities, the depredations of “barbarians” [nomadic Indians], tithes, the “dead hand” [of the Catholic Church], the latifundio, peonage, civil discord, and the military draft. In the intellectual sphere, they bemoaned the magical and animistic notions of the peasants, their religiosity combined with an indifference toward science, ignorance of the Spanish language in some, and the lack of literacy in all. . . . The tools and the systems of cultivation remained as antiquated as they were ineffective. Very few farmers irrigated and fertilized their lands, and no one knew of the modern methods for procuring water and using chemical fertilizers in their fields. They were men of the past, and even the administrators of the haciendas were afraid of the technical improvements in production methods introduced by the North Americans. 210  Luis González y González

To the farmers’ backwardness was added their lack of capital: agricultural credit banks were unknown, and agricultural income did not permit capitalization. Not even the few wealthy farmers obtained appreciable profits, except when a fertile year was followed by two or three sterile ones, assuming their fields were close to some city or port that consumed or shipped these products. Generally each community, ranch, or hacienda produced no more or less than necessary to satisfy strictly local consumption. To violate this norm was to expose oneself to the risks of overproduction, while failing to cultivate enough to live on might bode famine. . . . The majority of the republic’s sedentary Indians .  .  . were distributed among five thousand small villages which, instead of considering themselves part of a national whole, seemed like closed worlds. Each one owned a little land of poor quality, which was divided into “fundos” (the place where the village homes were located), “propios” (lands [meant] to sustain the town leaders), “ejidos” (for the common uses of the population), and “lands of common distribution,” used individually by the inhabitants and owned in common. When special protection of the Indians was ended by [the Liberal] regime of juridical equality, the haciendas seized part of the villages’ lands, leaving them insufficient land to support the residents and obliging them to sell their labor as day workers. . . . The individually owned lands were called, according to their size, ranchos or haciendas. The ranchos (small properties) were viewed sympathetically by the leading lights of liberalism; the haciendas, which were over a thousand hectares in size and with populations of more than a hundred, were less well regarded. In 1854 there were 6,092 haciendas and a significantly smaller number of hacendados. The haciendas of the North and of the coasts were so vast that it would have taken several days to walk from one end to the other. Ponciano Arriaga . . . railed against them in the Constituent Congress: “The accumulation by one or a few persons of great landed possessions, unworked, uncultivated, and unproductive, prejudices the common welfare and is contrary to the spirit of republican and democratic government.” . . . “The evidence has convinced me,” wrote Luis de la Rosa, “that the system of cultivating the great landed properties by means of day laborers .  .  . is very harmful to public morality, and [increasingly] prejudicial to the interests of the great landowners.” The farm laborers worked poorly. They were furnished only with bad food, little clothing, and a hut made of sticks and straw. The worst thing was that they were paid partly in cash and another part in certificates exchangeable in the hacienda stores. Debt servitude was a truly anti-­l iberal system. In order to cover extraordinary expenses (marriages, baptisms, festivals, and funerals) the peon indebted himself to the point of being sold to the patron, whom he could leave only through flight or because another master [paid] his debt. In the first case, he would be pursued by the authorities and sometimes returned; in the second, he would gain nothing. Liberals and the Land  211

Administrators and majordomos [overseers] . . . paid little and punished much. With whippings and beatings they hoped to overcome the perpetual laziness of the peons and to punish their small crimes, above all that of getting drunk on Mondays. However much the Liberals defended the workers—­saying that the blame lay with the miserable wage, debt servitude, the grinding workdays from sunup to sundown, and physical punishments—­ the overseers insisted on their [brutal] tactics. . . . There is . . . [another] point of rural life that the Reform condemned energetically: the survival of myth. Indian groups, especially those farthest from the center of the country, were still devoted to . . . a magical, animistic tradition. The rest of the peasantry, if less superstitious, clung to religious beliefs [that were often] incompatible with scientific progress. . . . Superstition was compounded by ignorance of Spanish. . . . [Instead of using the idiom of the majority,] each ethnic group spoke in its own way, and there were more than a hundred aboriginal ethnic groups. . . . None of these old languages was written. . . . The remaining cultivators, although Spanish speakers, also failed to fulfill the requirements of modernity. Their religious ideas were not founded in gospel, were contaminated by superstition, and sanctioned intolerant and backward attitudes. Their secular knowledge was very slight; their lack of letters, total. And they did not even have opportunities to become educated. The children of the countryside did not attend the urban schools, while a school in the countryside was an extraordinary thing. . . . Writings by Luis Robles, .  .  . Francisco Zamacona, [and others] show a blind faith in the redemptive and profitable capabilities of modern means of communication, especially railroads. Robles said: “Peace, the increase of the population, equilibrium between public revenues and expenditures, and the export of the various fruits of our soil, are Mexico’s necessities: all of them will be satisfied when we have a network of railroads that unites our producing districts with the coasts.” Zamacona asserted: “The iron roads will solve all of the political, social, and economic questions that the want and bloodshed of two generations have not been able to solve.” . . . By 1856, most European countries and the United States had a vast network of iron rails. Mexico, by contrast, had not even united its capital with its major port. Railroad building began to be taken seriously when the Liberal Party took power. While Ignacio Comonfort was president, concessions were granted to several construction companies. Political discord and the inexperience of some concessionaires retarded the task. The storm passed; new concessions were granted; and the older ones began to bear fruit. On December 20, 1872, at the Peak of Maltrata, the rails that went from Veracruz to Mexico City were united. On January 1, 1873, President [Sebastián] Lerdo de Tejada inaugurated the route. . . . To assist with colonization, the Liberals proposed to divide and sell the 212  Luis González y González

terrenos baldíos. . . . On July 20, 1863, when the republican government found itself in San Luis Potosí, it expedited a general law of alienation of “vacant” lands which hoped to foment colonization and the small property. . . . Among the “illegitimate” owners of vacant lands were indigenous peoples whose lands were “denounced” and adjudicated to the denouncer. . . . The policy of baldíos did not favor the Indians, nor did it produce small property owners. It certainly did benefit the great latifundistas, as did the “Lerdo Law.” The Lerdo Law had been passed on June 25, 1856, by [Treasury Secretary] Miguel Lerdo de Tejada. It ordered that properties belonging to civil and ecclesiastical corporations be adjudicated to their tenants or, in their absence, to those who denounced them or bought them at public auction. Article 8 of that order exempted the village fundos and ejidos, but it abandoned to fate the propios and the land of común repartimiento, and despoilments were in fact perpetrated. . . . The Indians opposed all of these measures, both because they lacked the spirit of individualism and because they feared abuses. El Constitucional wrote: “A multitude of lands that are called ‘communal’ and which are cultivated by the Indians on their own account, have passed into the hands of denouncers, leaving the Indians, overnight, without a patch of ground on which to walk, and exposing them to the whims of the new owners.” Ignacio Ramírez asked in 1868 that the parcelization of Indian property be suspended, since “communal lands had been usurped through a variety of means . . . , including buying judges. . . .” [Between 1867 and 1876], only a few villages had their lands divided; others, through hard efforts, managed to impede the division. These usually lost their lands later. The Indian, owner of his parcel of land, might find himself confronted one day by a cacique [local boss] who would threaten to take the parcel from him for failing to pay his taxes. The Indian might consult a bad lawyer who was in connivance with the cacique. The bad lawyer would counsel the Indian to sell his land before losing it. The Indian would accept and cede the land to the cacique in exchange for . . . whatever. And this was only one of the multiple forms in which the despoilment was consummated. The first law of divestment (that of June 25, 1856) [also] sought . . . to take land from the “dead hand” of the Church and divide it up, thereby putting into circulation large amounts of stagnant wealth through a wise strategy which [would help the clergy. They] would be assured of the proceeds of their capital, and their property would be [improved] simply by changing its form. In addition, this would increase the funds of the public treasury. . . . But all of the bishops—­if not the parish priests—­protested against the law, and were not without influence in its application and results. The majority of the tenants on the clergy’s farms, and small farmers in general, refused to buy church property, some for lack of money, others due to the scruples of conscience. Not a single poor person escaped from poverty Liberals and the Land  213

thanks to the Lerdo Law; but many rich landowners and merchants increased their fortunes without caring a bit about the excommunications thrown their way by the bishops, who, determined to do themselves in, fomented the wars of the Reform. In reply to that bellicose attitude, and in order to obtain a loan from the United States, Juárez ordered the nationalization of clerical property. . . . No energetic measures were taken against the secular latifundio. The majority of the Constituent Congress of 1856 was deaf to the propositions of men like Isidro Olvera, José María Castillo Velasco, and Ponciano Arriaga. Olvera proposed that the landowners with more than ten square leagues of cultivable land, or twenty of pastureland, be prohibited from acquiring more land. Castillo Velasco asked for the government’s help in increasing the number of landowners. Arriaga went the farthest in his celebrated vote . . . in favor of the distribution of “our fertile and currently idle lands among the hardworking men of our country.” He proposed that the owners of farms of more than fifteen square leagues be forced to enclose and cultivate them, under threat of losing them; to give ejidos to the villages that lacked them; and to distribute lots according to the census, buying the lands of surrounding haciendas for this purpose. [More than] eighty hacendados, all of them “indifferent to political movements[,]” .  .  . denounced the opprobrious words of Olvera, Castillo, and Arriaga against the sacred right of property; they held that for economic reasons, not merely those of justice, such words must be ignored. Congress, in the end, left the big landowners alone. . . . The Liberals’ aversion to the system of peonage was translated into some measures of a juridical nature. .  .  . President Juárez, upon hearing a peon decry the whipping he had received for having broken a plow blade, ordered the abolition of corporal punishments. Furthermore, Article 5 of the Constitution of 1857 tacitly prohibited debt servitude. [Several state constitutions also included laws favoring resident farmworkers.] War of another sort was undertaken against the ignorance and vices of the peaceful population. . . . Justo Sierra asserted that Juárez’s greatest dream was of schools, above all those which would rescue “the Indian families from their moral prostration, superstition; from mental abjection, ignorance; from physiological abjection, alcoholism; to bring them to a better condition, though conditions may improve but slowly.” The Constitution of 1857 stated: “Education is free.” The law of April 15, 1861, ratified the freedom of education and made official education free of charge. . . . The majority of the states followed the example of the Federal District in expediting laws that declared primary education free of charge, scientific, and obligatory, and they provided for sanctions for parents who were remiss. . . . [However,] such new schools, for economic reasons, were not built in the countryside. . . . 214  Luis González y González

Half of the rural population, the Indians, did not achieve anything and lost what little they had. . . . The Liberal regime could not establish schools for Indians. Indians could not attend the schools of the Spanish-­speakers because they did not know Spanish and it was difficult to find anyone to teach them. Ignacio Ramírez vainly suggested, among other practical measures, that the Indians be taught in their own languages. Between the native and Mexican races there was a wide gulf of language. The solution was urgent, and practically impossible. The great Liberal generation, led by Benito Juárez, did not solve it and, in the end, failed to realize their dream of transporting the Indian from the remote culture in which he lived to the liberal present. The defeat of reformist agrarianism has provided historians of both the right and the left the pleasure of explaining it. Some say that the agrarian plan of the Reform was not carried out in all of its parts; that it was a trick to force the poor to quench the bourgeoisie’s insatiable thirst for glory, comfort, and power. Others, fanatics for discipline, claim that the democratic-­Liberal governments had no creative faculty, only a capacity for destruction. Witnessed from up close, between the words and deeds of Liberal agrarianism, instead of bad faith or ineptitude, one sees the confabulation of different adverse circumstances: the opposition of the clergy, the army, and the landowners, the French intervention, the division of the Liberal group into puros and tímidos, the apathy of the people, the shortage of public funds, and so forth.

Liberals and the Land  215

Standard Plots and Rural Resistance Raymond B. Craib

Some historians insist that the fundamental problem of Mexican agriculture was fairly simple. The eminent historian Enrique Florescano, for instance, holds that “in the indigenous mentality, there was no concept of individual property.” Luis González concurs, claiming that Indians “lacked the spirit of individualism.” This supposedly innate preference for communal forms of land ownership, most historians contend, clashed with the vision of Liberals at midcentury: witness their celebrated 1856 Lerdo Law, which ordered municipalities to divide their communal lands into individual, privately owned plots. Such land divisions, the Liberals believed, would unleash the potential of the individual Indian farmer and help to make him a true citizen of the nation. Land reform would also put an end to murkiness of land claims by clearly delineating boundaries; and it would enable the government to collect taxes on property and property transactions. In the commonly accepted version, Indian villages resisted the drive toward individualism and private ownership but were eventually dispossessed by corrupt officials and encroaching hacendados. The anger of Mexico’s rural folk would become a crucial spark igniting the violent Mexican revolution of 1910. Given that the end result of Liberal land reform was indeed the concentration of indigenous lands in the hands of large white landowners, this version seems plausible enough. Yet until recently, little research has been done in local archives to find out how the liberal vision translated into reality on the ground. In the following essay, Raymond Craib, an agrarian and social historian at Cornell University, demonstrates that the state privatization of land was far more complex and unpredictable than most historians or contemporary state makers ever imagined. Early in the morning on July 29, 1869, Martin Holzinger arrived with instruments and plans in the village of Acultzingo, Veracruz. The Prussian engineer had been hired by the municipal authorities to survey and divide the communal lands of the municipio into individual plots. The plots would be recorded on a master map for deposit in the municipal archive as well as in the notary’s office in the district capital of Orizaba. Although Holzinger finished his calculations by sunset, his land division eventually took the better part of three years to complete. He attributed the delay to “the lethargy of the Authorities, the apathy of the indígenas and the influence of the so-­called 216

Tetíazcal [indigenous chief] who, not wanting to see the lands of this pueblo divided, devised to discredit it and put up all kinds of traps so that it would not succeed.” While Holzinger’s survey was, by his own estimation, one of the earliest completed land divisions in the state of Veracruz, his complaints reveal how difficult the process could be. The land division was anything but the quick and easy triumph of geometry over geography.

Surveyors, Communities, and the Practice of the Survey Legislated into existence by individual states, such as Veracruz in 1826, and nationally codified in the Ley Lerdo of June 25, 1856, the repartimiento de terrenos comunales (division of communal lands) constituted the means by which land worked in usufruct by a largely indigenous peasantry and owned collectively by municipalities would be transformed into individual, privately held plots. Yet, for much of the century, the profusion of decrees, circulars, and laws brought little real change to rural Veracruz. How can this be explained? While federal and state officials talked much about the need for, and benefits of, a land division, they were remarkably haphazard with regards to the practical issues of implementing that division. Veracruz’s 1826 land division law, for example, had little to say about who would do the surveys, pay for them, or administer the process. Moreover, both state and federal governments lacked the technical, administrative, and financial ability to oversee the process. As a consequence, the surveys—­including the hiring, contracting, and paying of the surveyor—­became the responsibility of municipal authorities. Such an approach had the dual advantage of saving the government the costs of the land division and of keeping the newly installed liberal regime in the good graces of the rural communities, upon whom it depended for support, by allowing them a substantial measure of control over the process. On the other hand, it meant that state officials immersed the land division process in the contentious social and political world of the villages. From the beginning questions arose: How would the survey be conducted? How would the surveyor be paid? And, more fundamental still, who would do the survey? Land divisions, in theory, were to be done only by qualified surveyors due to official concerns that speculators might otherwise take advantage of “the ignorance of the Indians,” but such a provision proved problematic. As officials repeatedly noted, there were few professionally trained land surveyors in Mexico. In addition, more lucrative work than surveying communal lands awaited with the Ministry of Development’s proliferating projects. As a result, an eclectic array of individuals performed the land surveys—­large landowners, military surveyors working for the federal Geographic-­Exploration Commission [or cge , its Spanish acronym], a surprisingly high number of foreigners, as well as community officials—­ and while some were qualified surveyors, many were not, particularly those Standard Plots and Rural Resistance  217

community officials and regional elites chosen more for political, financial, or personal reasons than for their abilities. Little wonder that municipal authorities and different factions within communities argued vehemently over who would perform the survey. For example, in 1886, when the municipal president of Ixhuacan de los Reyes appointed a community member as the surveyor, over the opposition of the town síndico (who theoretically oversaw the land division process), a number of villagers took to the streets shouting, “Death to the authorities, long live Sr. Síndico.” Although quelled quickly, their action prompted a visit by the regional political authority who noted that the protestors were angered not by the land division per se but rather by the imposition of a surveyor whom they deemed not to be impartial. He managed to broker an agreement in which the surveyor would remain but his work would be subject to review by the síndico. Village officials were not always free to contract with whomever they wished. Regional elites and state officials had their own personal, political, and economic interests at stake and they often were able to influence the appointment of the surveyor. The political boss of Misantla in 1902 appointed an old colleague from his days in the cge to survey and divide the lands under his jurisdiction, and many villagers charged that he was illegally rewarded for the appointment with several choice plots of land. In another instance, a jefe político [regional political authority] rejected a contract between a community and a surveyor because the latter was an associate of a political enemy. The contentious process which inevitably surrounded the selection of the surveyor calls into question conceptions of surveyors as impartial technicians who mechanically implemented state plans. Surveyors were subject to the influences, threats, and overtures from those around them, whether it be the blandishments of the powerful or anonymous threats, such as the one posted on a surveyor’s door in Misantla: “Surveyor, my friend, go back to where you come from because if you stay, we’ll meet you in the monte [woods] one day.” Nor were surveyors simple lackeys of the state and large landowners. They came to the field with their own politics, persuasions, and interests. In some instances the federal government imprisoned surveyors as enemies of the state for purportedly inciting villagers to violence and rebellion. On other occasions, surveyors raised the ire of hacendados. Once the surveyor was chosen, municipal officials signed a contract to have the survey performed. This meant not only measuring the land into plots according to the number of registered recipients but also creating a final map of the survey to be deposited in both the municipal and cantonal archives. The final map was critical to communities. If the surveyor departed without leaving a completed and certified map, communities were condemned to resurveying their lands at their own expense. A notorious case of this sort of abuse was that of Victoriano Huerta. Huerta, a military officer 218  Raymond B. Craib

“Mapa del Pueblo de San Juan Bautista Acultzingo.” Hand-­d rawn copy of a 1559 título primordial map submitted to the Comisión Geográfico-­Exploradora, May 1895. From the archive of the Comisión Geográfico-­Exploradora, exp. 8, f. 243. Used courtesy of the Mapoteca Manuel Orozco y Berra.

who would eventually go on to overthrow Francisco Madero in the early stages of the Mexican revolution, contracted his surveying services while in the employ of the cge to a number of villages in central and northern Veracruz in the 1880s. He apparently left these villages upon receipt of payment without completing the survey or producing a final map of the division. Ironically, Huerta had been sent to one of the municipalities in part because another surveyor had himself been accused of not completing his duties and of trying to charge land recipients for the maps of their parcels. Such instances increased the communities’ suspicions about the entire land division process, particularly when their repeated complaints to state officials garnered only perfunctory and unsatisfactory responses. To protect themselves, municipal officials began drawing up contracts in which the surveyor was paid his fee at three different stages of the survey, and the last third only upon submission of the final map. Standard Plots and Rural Resistance  219

To pay the surveyor, municipal officials had a number of options: levy a fee on all members of the community who would be receiving plots; sell portions of the village’s land; or give the surveyor portions of the land in place of money. Sometimes a combination of two options would be used. Regardless, forcing communities to cover the costs often ensured that the surveys would proceed only haphazardly. The costs could be an enormous burden, particularly for smaller villages. In addition, village officials were often tempted to use available funds to construct municipal buildings or purchase portions of land rather than to pay the surveyor. Issues of payment could dramatically impact the survey in a multitude of ways. For example, it offered opportunities for powerful factions to influence the parameters of the surveyor’s tasks. In Acultzingo, the municipal authorities proved delinquent in paying Holzinger’s expenses, and he postponed his survey for some thirteen months. He returned to work when a group of merchants offered him a weekly fee providing he also divided portions of land of interest to them not included in the original division—­forest land on the outskirts of the village. Holzinger agreed, claiming it was “the only means of completing the reparto, because if I waited for the Authorities . . . it might never have been completed.” In another instance, the issue of payment sparked a whole series of questions within and between communities about exactly what land could be divided and under whose jurisdiction. Such disputes further delayed the implementation of the land divisions.

Agrarian History and Practice Once the surveys were completed, the process of plot distribution began. At the beginning of the survey, municipal authorities posted notices of the impending division, requesting that anyone in the community with rights to land and desiring to participate, sign up in order to receive a plot. The final list of recipients would then be used as the basis for determining how many lots would be created by the surveyor as well as their relative size. Once surveyed into existence, lots were usually assigned through a rifa—­ literally, a raffle. Although designed to minimize the potential for corruption in the land distribution, favoritism could pervade the process. Villagers from Misantla reported to the state governor that people of money or influence received the best lands in their municipality. In addition, the rifa faced stiff opposition once villagers became aware of its ramifications. The land division (and the rifa) only ensured villagers a plot of land somewhere within the village bounds. Thus, the lot they received would not necessarily encompass the land they had worked or the area in which they lived and grew their crops. In 1886, a number of villagers wrote the state governor complaining that they were to “receive our respective lots in places very distant from the congregación, and where for reasons of distance we cannot cultivate without 220  Raymond B. Craib

sacrificing our local interests .  .  . abandoning our home and our families.” Signatories to another letter found it “unjust” that “after having opened up virgin lands at the cost of much sweat and labor” they should now lose them. Villagers stood to lose more than the lands they had cleared. Crops such as vanilla or fruit trees required significant inputs of labor before they began to yield with regularity. They also constituted the patrimony which villagers wished to pass down to their children. In sum, the rifa could not account for the villagers’ particular means of working the land, or for what the land meant to them. Villagers occasionally managed to alter the land distribution in such a way as to maintain the lands they had traditionally worked. An 1889 report to the state governor on a land survey in Santiago Tuxtla observed that “some agraciados [recipients of land in the division] have more or less quantity of land” than others. The author continued that, while such a difference might at first appear unjust, it was the result of the wishes of a number of recipients “who, having possessed certain parcels from a long-­ago time, preferred to conserve these, although they would have less land surface than those lots indiscriminately adjudicated.” In Minatitlán the jefe político determined that villagers could keep the houses they had built even if they had been granted a different lot in the land distribution as long as they did not assert any permanent rights to those lots. These kinds of locally improvised solutions reveal just how complicated the land division could become once implemented on the ground, and the imaginative ways in which some people tried to modify the system to their relative advantage (or minimum disadvantage). More problematic for cultivators, however, was that the very logic that organized land as a patchwork of permanent parcels was not necessarily logical from the perspective of agrarian practice, tenure, and history. Permanent parceling could hardly account for something as complex and locally specific as the rueda (wheel), a form of tenure common in one mountainous region of Veracruz. The rueda was not, as one contemporary noted, “a determined agrarian measure, but an extension of land considered sufficient to provide a regular harvest in order that they do not go without maize during the year.” 1 That is, the size of the rueda changed yearly, even seasonally, to account for the vagaries of long-­term weather patterns, soil quality, changes in the size of a family, the kind of crop being grown, and so forth. A very local measure, it responded to villagers’ need to minimize risks of hunger or starvation rather than to maximize profits. Other questions arose: How could one survey and map the “properties” of cultivators who grew plants in several different areas but did not own the land upon which it grew? How could the crops of cultivators be respected if they sowed different things in different places? They could not, as a reply by the jefe político of Misantla to the protestations of a large group of vanilla cultivators in 1887 clearly reveals: starting from the premise that it would be impossible to subdivide lands “dedicated to sugStandard Plots and Rural Resistance  221

arcane or vanilla which are in general very small, almost insignificant and irregularly established,” he suggested they instead try to rent the land upon which their crops grew from the owners of the newly created lots. Villagers and village authorities often struggled to modify the land division in such a way as to dampen the most egregious effects of permanent parceling. One common form was condueñazgo, a modification of the land division process in which land would be divided into large lots, each one held communally by a determined number of community members as share­ holders. Each shareholder owned a share of the lot but did not have exclusive rights to any specific plot within its bounds. Condueñazgo, at least in theory, permitted traditional forms of agriculture to persist by maintaining a semi-­communal form of tenure. The state government grudgingly legalized con­dueñazgos in 1874 due to concerns over potential resistance to the land divisions. Modifications occurred in other ways. In Acultzingo, the majority of villagers who registered to receive land in the division expressed discontent with the parameters of the original survey contract and effectively forced Holzinger to divide the communal lands with distinct surveys: one of riego (land directly abutting a water channel) and one of temporal (land suitable for cultivation only during the rainy season). Each recipient would receive a plot of both riego and temporal. This modification made sense: the natural springs which coursed through the municipality were the lifeblood of agriculture, ensuring the success of crops such as corn, beans, chickpeas, chile, and barley. As much as they mitigated the effects of the division, modifications such as these were not lasting solutions. Condueñazgo persisted only until an increased financial and military capacity permitted the state to break these up into individual lots or until local power holders saw the potential benefits of the permanent titling and codification of parcels. More to the point, villages found themselves unable to alter the process of dividing property into permanent parcels. In contrast to, say, the rueda, permanent parceling could hardly account for change over time. The example of Acultzingo is instructive: in an era of steadily decreasing rainfall totals, many plots divided as riego land in 1870 were little better than plots of temporal by 1900, particularly those at the eastern edges of the village and farthest downstream from the water sources. The rueda, rights to crops rather than territory, the personal and familial histories of use: all defied easy summation. The land division, with its emphasis upon permanent parceling, simply could not account for the flexibility of customary tenure practices or for the modifications to such practices brought about by the demands of a constantly changing environment. The issue was not necessarily that of the imposition of private property over communal property. The “communal system” often easily accommodated forms of private ownership. The ultimate aim of land division, however, was to 222  Raymond B. Craib

conceive of land as a series of fixed parcels which could not be altered by local realities. Such fixity promised a kind of stability for buyers and sellers of land and for state bureaucrats, but it could make life very unstable for farmers accustomed to using land in accordance with their local needs and customs.

Rethinking “Indian Resistance” By the end of the century, some seventy years after the first promulgation of a land division law in the state and nearly a half-­century after the passage of the federal laws of the Reform, officials in Veracruz lamented that communal lands throughout the state had still not been divided. Governor Teodoro Dehesa, in 1897, succinctly summarized the common explanation for this persistence: “The clase indígena has always tenaciously opposed the division of communal lands.” Dehesa’s invocation reflected two prevalent assumptions among the establishment in Liberal and Porfirian Mexico: first, that surveys did not proceed apace because of “Indian” resistance; and second, that Indians were by their very nature opposed to the land division because of some innate anti-­l iberal, communitarian ethic. Dehesa effectively conflated ethnic identity (Indian-­ness) with ideology (anti-­liberalism). Yet a closer look at the actual process of land division has suggested that such accusations hardly account for the lethargic pace at which land divisions progressed in nineteenth-­ century Veracruz. In the first place, not all Indians opposed the land division. An emphasis upon “Indian resistance” reduced Indian communities to unified and homogeneous entities. They were not. There could be, and was, unity within diversity but the fact remains that villages were also riven by different kinds of conflict: generational, gender, and ethnic. Within communities some supported the land division while others did not. The municipal authorities who contracted surveyors often were, after all, Indians. Moreover, the constant delays in surveys were sometimes due to local disputes and negotiations over the process of implementation rather than simple opposition. As noted, disputes often erupted over who should divide the land or how it should be done and not necessarily over the fact of land division itself. The state’s dependence upon local structures of power to implement the land division meant that it inherited all of the local conflicts, rivalries, and histories which inevitably foiled the creation of a simple uniform grid. Although nicely articulated in speeches and decrees, on the ground the land division appears less as some kind of carefully articulated state strategy than a widely variable and contested process, shaped by a wide range of agents: municipal, regional, and federal authorities; landowners and local elites; and, not least of all, villagers and surveyors. Dehesa, of course, did not entirely imagine “resistance.” But we should be careful not to assume that such resistance had always been there nor that it Standard Plots and Rural Resistance  223

was uniform and unchanging. Such a conception merely serves to strengthen notions of a romantic but static tradition and, even worse, locates villagers outside of history. Outright opposition to the land divisions was not, as Dehesa seemed to suggest, a visceral response conditioned by some primordial anti-­liberal chromosome buried deep in the Indian’s genetic code. The process of implementing the land division left much to be desired in the eyes of many and resistance to surveys most likely sprung from more historical (and admittedly mundane) roots: namely, a historical memory of error-­r idden or incomplete surveys, dubious surveyors, and unsympathetic authorities. Land surveys were riddled with mistakes and problems or simply not carried out in the way they were supposed to be; surveyors did not fulfill their obligations; surveyors could be imposed upon villagers by interested federal, regional, or municipal officials at exorbitant costs; and they were often neither trained nor impartial. Resistance also increased as communities learned how little control they had over the final form of land distribution and the ways in which parceling would affect their agrarian practices, livelihoods, and existing properties. Holzinger’s journal, for example, reveals that opposition by both villagers and village authorities developed at specific points in time over the course of his survey, such as when he plotted out the fundo legal [urban township]. When Holzinger arrived in Acultzingo, he confronted a town “without a well-­ demarcated fundo legal and only two streets that scarcely deserve the name.” He thus determined to create one himself, mapping into existence seven rectilinear streets and some sixty-­four blocks of urban plots, “each with the symmetry which Modern Towns require and conforming to the Topography of the land.” His actions generated vociferous opposition among villagers and the authorities who saw the urban plots and homes they had created being reordered to conform to Holzinger’s aesthetic sensibilities. Even the town priest voiced his opposition, angered as he was by Holzinger’s attempts to put a road through his farm, which abutted the church. Holzinger eventually completed his survey on May 15, 1872, a day, he wrote, which “will be one of joy among the unfortunate indígenas in that pueblo who before did not even have a home.” For too long they had been “owners of everything .  .  . but possessed nothing.” By 1911, however, most villagers in Acultzingo owned nothing. Within thirty years of Holzinger’s survey, a small minority of indigenous villagers and mestizo elites had come to own the majority of Acultzingo’s land. Land did indeed become concentrated in fewer and fewer hands and Acultzingo did in fact become a hotbed of agrarian radicalism. Yet while many cultivators in the latter half of the nineteenth century might have predicted the consequences of the land division (which they accordingly sought to modify) and the obsession with standard plots, few could have foretold a revolution. We might accordingly

224  Raymond B. Craib

modify the standard plot which constitutes the conventional agrarian history of nineteenth-­century Mexico, one which, in a single leap of faith, fills the temporal gap between the issuance of a legislative decree and the loss of pueblo land with ready-­made actors and romanticized notions of resistance. Note 1. Joaquín María Rodríguez, Apuntes sobre el Cantón de Xalapa, Estado de Veracruz, México (Xalapa: Imprenta Veracruzana de la Viuda e Hijos de Ruiz, 1895), 70.

Standard Plots and Rural Resistance  225

Offer of the Crown to Maximilian Junta of Conservative Notables

In addition to taking lands away from those who, in the Liberals’ view, would use them inefficiently—­namely the Indian communities and the Church—­the Reform Laws also attacked the special privileges of army officers and Catholic clergy and sought to undercut the Church’s ideological influence. These measures infuriated the Conservatives, who were supported by the Catholic and military hierarchy, and in 1857 they provoked a Conservative rebellion that came to be known as the War of the Reform. The Liberals emerged victorious in this bloody three-­year civil war, but owing to its terrible destruction, President Benito Juárez presided over a destitute country in 1860. Conservatives continued to decry the liberal course of the Republic, while foreigners clamored for repayment of Mexico’s debts, old and newly acquired. Juárez found himself obliged to suspend all payments on the foreign debt in July 1861, whereupon England, France, and Spain opted for military intervention. They landed troops at Veracruz in October 1861. While the aggressors had formally foresworn any intention of armed conquest, it soon became clear that Napoleon III, emperor of France, intended precisely that. With the United States in the throes of its own civil war, the French emperor thought it a good time to defy the Monroe Doctrine and to stake a French claim to New World territory. It took his armies nearly two years to seize the Mexican capital from Juárez’s dogged republican regime. Napoleon III found some eager allies in Mexico’s Conservatives, who had long been persuaded that republicanism was at the root of Mexico’s woes and that monarchy was the only form of government suited to their country. After reviewing the available European princes, they settled on Maximilian, the Hapsburg Archduke of Austria. In the following selection, a Junta of Conservative Notables formally offers Maximilian the crown on July 10, 1863. 1. The republican system, whether it takes the form of a federation or a centralized government, has, during the many years of its existence, been a fertile source of all the many evils that afflict our country, and neither good sense nor political reason permit us to hope that it can be remedied except by destroying the sole cause of our misfortunes at its root. 2. The institution of monarchy is the only one suitable to Mexico, especially in our current circumstances, because it combines order with liberty, 226

and strength with the strictest justification. Thus, it is nearly always capable of imposing order over anarchy and demagogy, which are essentially immoral and disruptive. 3. To found the throne, it is not possible to choose a sovereign among the natives of the country (although there is no shortage of men of eminent merit), because the principal qualities that distinguish a king are those that cannot be improvised, and it is not feasible that a simple private individual should possess such qualities, much less that they can be established, without other antecedents, by a mere public vote. 4. And finally: a prince who stands out for his clearly exalted lineage, no less for his personal virtues, is the Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian of Austria. It is he who must receive the vote of the nation so that he may rule its destiny, because he is among the descendants of the royal house most distinguished for its virtues, extensive knowledge, elevated intelligence, and special gift for governance.

The Commission, accordingly, submits for the definitive resolution of the respectable Assembly, the following propositions: 1. The Mexican nation adopts for its form of government a moderated monarchy, hereditary, with a Catholic prince. 2. The Sovereign shall take the title of Emperor of Mexico. 3. The imperial crown of Mexico is offered to His Royal Highness, Prince Ferdinand Maximilian, Archduke of Austria, for himself and his descendants. 4. In case unforeseeable circumstances prevent the Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian from taking possession of the throne that is offered him, the Mexican nation shall appeal to His Majesty Napoleon III, Emperor of the French, to indicate another Catholic prince.

Offer of the Crown to Maximilian  227

A Letter from Mexico Empress Carlota

Maximilian and his wife, Carlota, arrived in Mexico in June 1864 to begin what turned out to be a dramatic and disastrous three-­year attempt at ruling a Mexican Empire. They were opposed from the start by the Liberals, led by Benito Juárez, who kept up a steady armed opposition. These Liberals were joined by nationalistic Conservatives who resented foreign domination. Maximilian made the roster of his foes complete by making it clear that he was, in fact, a liberal at heart. His draft constitution upheld the reform laws attacking the nation’s Catholic Church, endorsed religious freedom, decreed the equality of all Mexican citizens under the law, forbade debt peonage and corporal punishment, and protected the rights of workers. These declarations were likely intended to win the hearts and minds of the Mexican poor, but as the following selection makes clear, their more crucial impact was to cost the emperor the support of the hardline, religious Conservatives who had previously been his greatest champions. While Maximilian and Carlota made a great show of adopting the customs of the country, it was obvious that they had a limited appreciation of Mexico’s cultures; the empress’s letter suggests that she held the country’s inhabitants in low regard, particularly Mexican Liberals, who are dismissed as so many bands of brigands. Increasingly, the monarchs found themselves almost entirely dependent on the support of the French army. As the civil war in the United States wound down, Napoleon III determined that his imperial adventure was doomed and began withdrawing his troops. Maximilian, in the words of his private secretary, was stubbornly naive: “It was the Emperor’s great illusion that if he could talk to Juárez he could attract him to his cause, make him his ranking minister, and aided by him, and freed of the intervention of the French, he could govern the Empire wisely and inaugurate for Mexico, in its entirety, an era of peace, progress, and well-­being.” 1 In the following letter to the French empress Eugenie, Empress Carlota implores the French monarchs to reconsider withdrawing their troops and outlines her vision of Mexico’s future. Carlota would leave Mexico in July 1866 to personally plead for greater French military support. In Europe, the unmistakable signs of serious mental illness became manifest, though she lived until 1926. Maximilian and two of his top generals were captured by the triumphant Liberals, court-­martialled, and executed by firing squad on June 19, 1867.

228

Chapultepec, February 3, 1865

Madam and beloved sister, I hope that the Emperor will effect no more reductions before he has heard General Douay. I think that if we are to do well this year, we shall require an effective force of forty thousand men, including all nationalities. This means that if a few thousand more could come to us from France, by continuing recruiting elsewhere, with the aid of money (though I do not know where we shall get it), we might perhaps reach this figure. It seems to me that M. Jules Favre2 could not but approve of our being assisted in combating the clergy, for it is only the latter which, combined with disorder and the Juarista bands, calls for an increase of the troops. This would be far from decreasing the confidence felt in the future of Mexico even in Europe, for it is in fulfilling its duty that our Government is meeting with resistance from the elements which it is bound to destroy so as to clear the way to order, progress, and the true and brilliant future of this country—­European immigration. It will not be long before France reaps a rich harvest from what she has sown. The traffic between Le Havre and Vera Cruz was considerable last year, and who knows how many French will come and settle here? As to what the good marshal said—­that there are more organized bands from Vera Cruz to San Blas and from Durango to Monterey [sic]—­Your Majesty would think I give you false reports if this were true, but nothing could be less accurate at the present moment, and General L’Hérillier is obliged to dispatch expeditions from Mexico in every direction with the greatest energy, there are so many bands. It is also announced that a certain number of pronunciamientos are about to take place in favour of “religión y fueros” [religion and clerical privileges], at Guadalajara among other places. It seems to me that it would be easy to send us some reinforcements from Algeria now that everything seems to be over there. Frankly, supposing that we were not supported, we should have to set aside all our projects of reform and govern as M. Gutierrez3 desired, surrounding ourselves as with a great wall of China. I quite see that this system was perfectly rational; it was also eminently Mexican and that was what was wrong with it; whereas it is our mission gently, affectionately, but none the less surely, to attract to Mexico a stream of population which shall absorb the old one, for there is nothing to be done with the existing elements. I should say it quite openly if I were not afraid that it would be repeated here. I rely upon immigration, which will perhaps begin this year, and if I were not convinced that it would be considerable, I should be bound to admit to Your Majesty that all we are doing would be to no purpose. The affair of the clergy has been the touchstone which has confirmed me in all the ideas which I formed as soon as we arrived, and I see that I was not mistaken. However that may be, it is rather fortunate that we A Letter from Mexico  229

have found out in time that Europe alone can fitly people this Empire, and if Your Majesty’s gentle influence can provide us with a few more troops, the situation will be afianzada [secured]. I do not doubt for a moment that Your Majesties will regret the reductions when you know what is going on. I therefore rely with the utmost confidence upon the hand which pressed ours on March 12 and on April 10 traced those lines which are the expression of a great power as well as of a sovereign friendship: “Always rely upon my friendship and support.” I put my trust in that hand, in Your Majesty’s heart, and in him who said: “God helps those who help themselves.” It seems to me that by all these means together, we cannot fail to triumph. The poor Holy Father is doing us a pretty service in Europe with the encyclical.4 If I might allow myself a slight irreverence, I should say that if it comes from any spirit at all, I do not think it is the Holy Spirit. Our Lord gave peace to His Apostles and did not address them in any other terms; nowadays it is trouble that they are trying to disseminate. Ah! if Bossuet5 were still living, it would be he and the clergy of France, who are so able and so Catholic, to whom we should owe the salvation of Europe from a schism. If it were not for the Gallican church, confusion would fall upon men’s consciences in the attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable. God did not make faith and reason to contradict each other, but to confirm each other. I find this very consoling. . . . As for our costumes, we dress in Mexican fashion, I go out riding in a sombrero, our meals are in the Mexican style, we have a carriage drawn by mules with quantities of bells, we never use any wraps but sarapes, I go to mass in a mantilla; in short, if we have any secret thoughts of emigration, it does not look like it. It is not reforms that shock men, it is the way in which they are carried out; and so in all that is external and puerile we conform to all that is most Mexican, to such an extent as to amaze the very Mexicans themselves. My parties end after one o’clock. Next Monday will be the sixth. I dance a few quadrilles, one of which is regularly with General L’Hérillier. I am gradually inviting all the French officers, even the paymasters, who had a great longing to dance. . . . Life here is almost like the Middle Ages; we are gay, contented, and calm, and yet there is nothing to prevent a band of guerrillas from falling upon us at any minute. Up here we have cannon and a system of signals for communicating with the city. But that does not prevent us from being always on the look-­out. The night before last I got up on hearing cannon-­fi re; it was a tumultuous celebration in honour of the Virgin of Tacubaya, as if the Presentation had taken place at four in the morning; I suppose it was to allow for the difference of time between here and Jerusalem. All religious festivities take place here at night, amid an explosion of fire-­crackers, as if the earth were being rent asunder. In the daytime festivals go off more quietly. There is no de230  Empress Carlota

The Emperor Maximilian in casket. Photograph by François Aubert, 1867. From Mexico through Foreign Eyes, 1850–1990, ed. Carole Naggar and Fred Ritchin (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1993), 163.

nying that this country has a character all its own; Gutiérrez was quite right about that too, except that he liked it, whereas we see nothing to respect in it and shall act in such a way as to change it. The masses are excessively stupid and illiberal, and it is not the licenciados (intelligentsia) who will stir them up; that explains the strangle-­hold which the clergy have managed to obtain on them; it does not educate the people, and so they remain as they are, and because they are as they are, the clergy has a free hand. Your Majesty has doubtless read Marie Antoinette’s charming letters published by M. d’Hunolstein? This suggests the reflection that everything comes to light one day, whether one is celebrated or not; one does not know what may happen, and when one expresses judgments that are not very charitable, it is not at all to be desired. Your Majesty will see what I am driving at. In order to be quite sure that the Mexicans do not know what I am saying about them until a new nation is in being which will say the same, I should be glad if Your Majesty would destroy all my letters. They are intended only as conversations; once the idea is expressed, my object is attained. It would be a service on your part which I should appreciate extremely. Meanwhile, in concluding this long letter I beg Your Majesty to be assured of the unchanging attachment with which I am

Your Majesty’s good sister and friend, Carlota A Letter from Mexico  231

Notes 1. José Luis Blasio, Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico: Memoirs of His Private Secretary, trans. and ed. Robert Hammond Murray (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1934), 62. 2. Jules Favre (1809–80), leader of the republican opposition to the empire of Napoleon III. Eds. 3. Apparently a reference to José María Gutiérrez de Estrada, a diehard Mexican monarchist who had worked since the 1840s to bring a European prince to a Mexican throne. Eds. 4. In 1864, Pope Pius XIX (1792–1878; pope 1846–78) angered progressive Catholics with his encyclical Quanta cura, which was accompanied by a so-­called “Syllabus of Errors,” which harshly denounced liberalism, republicanism, democracy, rationalism, and many other features of the modern world. Eds. 5. Jacques Bénigne Boussuet (1627–1704), French priest, regarded as one of the greatest orators in French history. Eds.

232  Empress Carlota

The Triumph of the Republic, 1867 Benito Juárez

The Liberal victory over Maximilian in 1867 was a source of patriotic pride for many Mexicans, but it was also widely interpreted as the definitive victory of republicanism in Mexico. In the following selection a triumphant Juárez issues a stirring proclamation to the Mexican people on July 15, 1867. The brief and eloquent proclamation is redolent with meanings. First, it celebrates the nation’s will to survive the darkest night in its young history. During Mexico’s longest foreign occupation since Bourbon times, Juárez himself became a national icon, an indomitable, peripatetic figure who kept the idea of a sovereign republic alive, sometimes only a few leagues ahead of the empire’s pursuing forces in his simple black coach. Second, the proclamation signals Juárez’s determination to transcend the bitter, internecine conflict between Liberals and Conservatives that had undermined the republic’s entire existence. The challenge, he points out, is to reconcile justice with national reconciliation. An example was made of Maximilian and two of his top generals, who were executed under the law, but there would be no further rounds of vengeance against fellow Mexicans. Finally, the reader will detect a certain irony in this declaration. Juárez pledges himself to uphold Mexico’s free republican institutions, emphasizing that henceforth the Mexican people will be the arbiters of their fate. How ironic that Juárez’s subsequent Restored Republic (1867–72), which would usher in an era of sustained growth and stability, would also witness the creation of a formidable Juarista Liberal political machine. In laying the groundwork for both a modernizing economy and an authoritarian central state, Benito Juárez was the precursor of Mexico’s quintessential “order and progress” caudillo, Porfirio Díaz. Mexicans: The national Government today returns to establish its residence in the City of Mexico, from which it fled four years ago. At that time it made a resolution never to abandon its duties, which were all the more sacred when the nation’s conflict was the greatest. It did this with the clear confidence that the Mexican people would fight unceasingly against the iniquitous foreign invasion, in defense of their rights and their freedom. The Government fled so that it could sustain the banner of the fatherland for as long as necessary, until it obtained the triumph of the holy cause of independence and of the institutions of the Republic. 233

Despite his stirring rhetoric about republicanism, Benito Juárez became increasingly autocratic in the later years of his government, and the system grew increasingly corrupt. In this cartoon, drawn by Santiago Hernández, pesos from the national treasury drop ballots into an electoral urn held by Juárez and his finance minister. The caption beneath the cartoon contains one of President Juárez’s more unfortunate turns of phrase: “Go tell the people that they have voted and that thus speaks the Supreme Government.” From La Orquesta, June 30, 1869.

The good sons of Mexico have achieved this triumph, fighting alone, without anyone’s help, without resources, without the elements necessary for war. They have shed their blood with sublime patriotism, making every sacrifice, for they would never consent to the loss of the Republic and of their freedom. In the name of the grateful fatherland, I pay tribute to the good Mexicans who have defended it, and to their worthy leaders. The triumph of the fatherland, which has been the object of their noble aspirations, shall always be their greatest claim to glory and the best reward for their heroic efforts. With full confidence in the people, the Government complied with its duties, without ever once thinking it licit to reduce any of the rights of the nation. The Government has fulfilled the first of its duties by not contracting any compromise overseas or in the interior of the country which could prejudice in any way the independence and sovereignty of the Republic, the integrity of its territory, or the respect due to the Constitution and laws. Its enemies tried to establish another government and other laws, but they were unable to realize their criminal intentions. After four years, the Government returns to the City of Mexico, with the banner of the Constitution and with the same laws, without having ceased to exist for a single instant within the national territory. 234  Benito Juárez

The Government does not wish, has never wished—­especially now, in the hour of the complete triumph of the Republic—­to allow itself to be inspired by any sentiment of passion against the enemies that it has fought. Its duty has been, and is, to weigh the demands of justice with all of the considerations of mercy. The restrained nature of its conduct in all of the places where it has resided has demonstrated its desire to moderate as far as possible the rigor of justice, conciliating indulgence with its strict duty to apply the laws as far as is necessary to secure the peace and future of the nation. Mexicans: We direct all our strength to obtain and consolidate the benefits of peace. Under the Government’s auspices, the protection of the laws and the authorities shall effectively ensure the rights of all of the inhabitants of the Republic. The people and government must respect the rights of everyone. Among individuals as among nations, peace means respect for the rights of others. We have confidence that all Mexicans, taught by the prolonged and dolorous experience of the calamities of war, will henceforth cooperate for the well-­being and prosperity of the nation, which can only be achieved with inviolable respect for the laws and with the obedience of the authorities elected by the people. In our free institutions, the Mexican people are the arbiters of their fate. With the sole aim of sustaining the cause of the people during the war, while they were unable to elect their leaders, I have had to, in accordance with the spirit of the Constitution, retain the power that was conferred upon me. Now that the struggle is ended, my duty is to convoke the people at once so that, with no pressure or illegitimate influence upon them, they may choose with absolute freedom the person to whom they wish to entrust their fate. Mexicans: We have achieved the greatest good that we can desire, having consummated for the second time the independence of our fatherland. We shall all cooperate so that we will be able to bequeath prosperity to our children, loving and sustaining always our independence and our freedom.

The Triumph of the Republic  235

Porfirio Díaz Visits Yucatán Channing Arnold and Frederick J. Tabor Frost

In 1876 General Porfirio Díaz, a hero in the war against the French, overthrew the government of Juárez’s successor, Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada (who had come to office when Juárez died suddenly at the beginning of his fourth term, in 1872). Díaz’s rallying cry was “Effective suffrage, no reelection”; yet, with the exception of a four-­year interregnum, he would be Mexico’s dictator until 1911, presiding over an increasingly harsh and corrupt system. The pace of the global economy greatly accelerated during these years, and countries like Mexico, which depended heavily on the export of raw materials to the industrialized nations, experienced a frenzied pace of change which proved, in general, to be bad news for the laborers of the country. As the demand for Mexico’s exports grew, so too did the demands on labor. Working conditions in many areas—­such as the tobacco plantations of the Valle Nacional in Oaxaca, the lumber camps of Chiapas, and the henequen fields of Yucatán—­gained great notoriety as regions where the most barbaric forms of “slavery” were practiced. While many travelers to Mexico may certainly be accused of using the term slavery imprecisely, the conditions they described—­debt servitude, extreme exploitation, corporal and even capital punishment—­were harsh by any standard. In their grim portrayal of conditions of life on Yucatecan haciendas, British travel writers Arnold and Frost were hardly scientific in their observations and were rather sweeping in their judgments. In their haste to indict the planters of Yucatán, they occasionally fall into factual errors. Moreover, they seem intent upon proving the notion that tourists tend to view other societies with an “imperial gaze”: thus, they often compare the Yucatecan elite unfavorably with their more noble British counterparts; they allow that slavery may sometimes be a justifiable means of domesticating an inferior race; they favor corrective action by the United States; and they make much of the supposed docility of the Maya—­a charge that was often made, but invariably mistaken. However, in their account of Porfirio Díaz’s visit to Yucatán, Arnold and Frost hit upon a key feature of the regime: its tendency to treat Mexico’s most grievous problems with that simplest of strategies, denial. There would be no hardship [for the Maya of Yucatán] if—­and it is a large, large if —­the patient toiler were a free man. The Yucatecans have a cruel proverb, “Los Indios no oigan sino por las nalgas” (“The Indians can hear only 236

Porfirio Díaz poses in front of the Aztec sunstone. A carved disk that represented and legitimized Aztec rulership, the sunstone in this photograph appears to lend weight to Díaz’s “monumental” stature in Mexican history. Photographer unknown, ca. 1910, Fototeca Nacional del inah , Colección Archivo Casasola, 647124.

with their backs”).1 The Spanish half-­breeds have taken a race once noble enough and broken them on the wheel of a tyranny so brutal that the heart of them is dead. The relations between the two peoples is ostensibly that of master and servant; but Yucatan is rotten with a foul slavery—­the fouler and blacker because of its hypocrisy and pretence. . . . The Yucatecan millionaires are very sensitive on the question of slavery, and well they may be: for their record is as black as [Simon] Legree’s in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. You have but to mention the word “slavery,” and they begin a lot of cringing apologetics as to the comforts of the Indians’ lives, the care taken of them, and the fatherly relations existing between the haciendado [sic] and his slaves. . . . They take just so much care of the Indians as reasonably prudent men always take of their live stock; so much and no more. . . . A recent visit [was] paid to the country by President Díaz. It was the first time during the whole of his long reign that the great man had troubled himself about the limestone peninsula which forms the furthermost eastern part of his dominions, and the trembling Yucatecans looked to the bolts of the cupboard in which the family skeleton was hidden, and they were not over-­ satisfied with those bolts. They had new locks made and new and thicker doors fixed so that august presidential ears should not be offended by the rattling of those most unfortunate bones. With their teeth chattering, they Porfirio Díaz Visits Yucatán  237

hastened to put their house in order and sweep and garnish it, for they knew quite well that the eyes into which they had to throw dust were eyes which could see further than most eyes. It was all the fault of a snobbish governor. Many a henequen lord must have cursed the self-­importance of their parvenu chief which had induced in him such discontent with the Spartan-­like simplicity of his rule at Merida that he must needs wish to entertain presidential guests and bask in the sunshine of the mighty Díaz’s approval. Díaz, they knew very well, cared little or nothing for Indians qua Indians. But Díaz cares immensely about the fair name of Mexico, which they knew they had done for years all they could to besmirch. Would he see the skeleton through the fatal door? If money and bribery were of any avail, those slave-­owners would see to it that their terrible ruler should be fooled. But they had to calculate on more than his natural perspicacity. There was much reason to believe that ugly rumours had reached Mexico City of the slavery rife in Yucatan, and that the President’s visit was not unconnected with these. That skeleton must be cemented into its cupboard with the cement of millions of dollars if necessary. Well, the President came. Never were there such junketings: night was turned into day; roadways were garlanded; gargantuan feasts were served. Lucullus never entertained Caesar with more gorgeous banquets than the henequen lords of Merida spread before Díaz. Small fortunes were spent on single meals. One luncheon party cost 50,000 dollars; a dinner cost 60,000, and so on. The official report of the reception reads like a piece out of the Arabian Nights. In their eagerness to keep that skeleton in its cupboard some of the haciendados actually mortgaged their estates. One of the most notable of the entertainments provided was that of a luncheon at a hacienda ninety miles south-­east of the city of Merida. At the station where the President alighted for the drive to the farm, the roadway was strewn with flowers. Triumphal arches of flowers and laurels, of henequen, and one built of oranges surmounted by the national flag, spanned the route. The farm-­workers lined the avenue of nearly two miles to the house, waving flags and strewing the road with flowers, while a feu-­de-­joie of signal rockets was fired on his alighting from his carriage. He then made a tour of the farm. Having inspected the henequen machinery he (we quote from the official report) “visited the hospital of the finca, and the large chapel where the Catholic labourers worshipped; the gardens and the beautiful orchard of fruit trees; and during this tour of inspection he honoured several labourers by visiting their huts thatched with palm-­leaf and standing in their own grounds well cultivated by the occupants. More than two hundred such houses constitute the beautiful village of this hacienda, which breathes an atmosphere of general happiness. Without doubt a beautiful spectacle is offered to the visitor to this lovely finca with its straight roads, its pretty village clustering round the central building surrounded by gardens of flower and fruit trees.” 238  Channing Arnold and Frederick J. Tabor Frost

At the luncheon the President in the course of his speech said:—­“Only can a visitor here realise the energy and perseverance which, continued through so many years, has resulted in all I have seen. Some writers who do not know this country, who have not seen, as I have, the labourers, have declared Yucatan to be disgraced with slavery. Their statements are the grossest calumny, as is proved by the very faces of the labourers, by their tranquil happiness. He who is a slave necessarily looks very different from those labourers I have seen in Yucatan.” The prolonged cheers and measureless enthusiasm evoked by these words (one can understand how the conspirators chuckled at the success of their efforts at deception) were agreeably interrupted by the appearance of an old Indian, who made a speech of welcome in his own language, presenting a bouquet of wild flowers and a photographic album filled with views of the hacienda. It is not necessary to quote the fulsome stuff which had been placed in the mouth of the poor old man by his master. It is simply a string of meaningless compliments which ends with these words: “We kiss your hands; we hope that you may live many years for the good of Mexico and her States, among which is proud to reckon itself the ancient and indomitable [surely a pathetic adjective under the circumstances] land of the Mayans.” Well may the official report say that “it is only justice to declare that the preparations of the feast and the decorations of the finca showed that the proprietor had been anxious to prepare everything with the most extraordinary magnificence.” This feast was a gigantic fraud, a colossally impertinent fake from start to finish. Preparations indeed! That is the exact word to describe the lavish entertainments of Mexico’s ruler here and elsewhere in Yucatan. Tens of thousands of dollars were lavished to guard the haciendados’ secrets. In this particular case the huts of the Indian labourers which the President visited were “fake” huts. They had been, every one of them, if not actually built for the occasion, cleaned, whitewashed, and metamorphosed beyond recognition. They had been furnished with American bentwood furniture. Every Indian matron had been given a sewing-­machine; every Indian lass had been trimmed out with finery and in some cases, it is said, actually provided with European hats. The model village round which the President was escorted was the fraud of a day; no sooner was his back turned than to the shops of Merida were returned sewing-­machines, furniture, hats and everything, and the Indians relapsed again into that simplicity of furnitureless life which they probably cordially preferred. We are not quoting the “faking” of this village as an example of hardship dealt out to the Indians, but as a proof of the ludicrous efforts made by those whose fortunes have been and are being built on slave labour to hide the truth from General Díaz. As for the poor old Mayan who addressed him, and as for the deputations of whip-­d rilled Indians who were paraded before him to express their untold happiness and loyalty, they very well knew that they had got to do exactly what they were told to do. We Porfirio Díaz Visits Yucatán  239

are not exaggerating when we state that it would have cost any Indian his life to have even attempted to make General Díaz aware of the truth. No Indian throughout civilised Yucatan could have been found to make the attempt. For nothing is sadder than the lack of all manliness and spirit which characterises the average Indian workman. . . . If the hardship of the Indians’ lot was merely slavery, it might be argued that there were slender grounds for our indictment. Slavery may under certain circumstances be far from an evil, where the backward condition of a race is such as to justify its temporary existence, and where the slave-­owner can be trusted. But the slave-­owner can very seldom be trusted, and he certainly cannot be in Yucatan. It is no exaggeration to say that the enslavement of the Indians of Yucatan never has had, never can have, justification. Conceived in an unholy alliance between the Church and brute force, it has grown with the centuries into a race-­degradation which has as its only objects the increasing of the millions of the slave-­owners and the gratification of their foul lusts. The social condition of Yucatan to-­day represents as infamous a conspiracy to exploit and prostitute a whole race as the history of the world affords. Yucatan is governed by a group of millionaire monopolists whose interests are identical, banded together to deny all justice to the Indians, who, if need be, are treated in a way an Englishman would blush to treat his dog. . . . And so, after centuries of oppression, the race is dead, a chattel, body and soul, of a corrupt and degraded people. When the task of revivifying these poor Mayans with the elixir of freedom is undertaken, if it ever is (and pray God it be), by the United States of America, it will be as difficult as nursing back to convalescence a patient sick unto death. No beings will at first understand freedom so ill. They are like prisoners who have been for weary years in the darkness of unlighted dungeons. The glare of the sunlight of freedom will be too dazzling for their poor atrophied eyes. They will shade them and cringe back into the gloom. Note 1. The term nalgas is a bit cruder than Arnold and Frost would have it. A better translation might be “backsides” or “rumps.” Eds.

240  Channing Arnold and Frederick J. Tabor Frost

Scenes from a Lumber Camp B. Traven

The mahogany camps of the southeastern state of Chiapas were among the most notoriously abusive industries in Porfirian Mexico. The abuse of Indian workers, often shanghaied from their villages, reached deadly extremes. The enigmatic German socialist writer B. Traven traveled in the region of the lumber camps as part of an anthropological expedition during the 1920s, a time when, despite the revolution, conditions in the camps had changed but little. His informants were the lumber workers themselves, and he always claimed that he represented them with unsentimental accuracy. In the following excerpt, taken from one of Traven’s series of “jungle” novels, Indians newly arrived at a lumber camp are initiated into some harsh realities. The new gang reached the south camp in the middle of the night. The men were dead on their feet with fatigue from the march through the underbrush and a two-­hour struggle to get out of the heavy, sticky mud of the swamps. They let themselves fall to the ground with whatever they were carrying, and it was not until almost half an hour later that they began to have the strength to ask for something to eat. The cook told them he had nothing to give them and that unless they had brought their own provisions they would have to wait until morning. . . . “Any of you ever been in a camp before?” [someone] asked. “Not me,” replied one of the men in a voice exhausted by fatigue. “And I don’t believe that any of us know the camps.” Santiago, one of the ox-­d rivers, broke in, saying: “Well, you’ll get to know them. You’ll get to know hell and all its devils.” Nobody took up his words. The old hands smoked; the new ones waited for their beans and coffee to get warm. The fire crackled, throwing out sparks, and at last decided to burn brightly.

The Indians lying around the fire suddenly raised their heads as if they had heard the roar of a jaguar in the underbrush. “What’s that noise coming from the jungle?” asked Antonio, an Indian from Sactun, listening intently. 241

Lumber workers in Chiapas. Photograph by Gertrude Duby Blom, 1940s. Used by permission of Na Bolom Museum, Mexico.

“Do you mean those groans and moans in the underbrush?” asked Santiago, raising his eyebrows. “Yes, that’s what I mean. You’d think that somebody was tormenting gagged animals.” “By God, comrade,” said Santiago ironically, “I assure you that you’re sharp of hearing. You must be able to hear a flea dancing on a silk handkerchief. With hearing like that, you’ll get somewhere! Besides, you’re not mistaken.” “No, you’re not mistaken, you’ve heard perfectly,” interposed Matías. “They’re tormenting animals, and they’re holding their mouths to stifle cries that might disturb Don Acacio while he’s slipping between the heavy thighs of his Cristina, the girl with the twisted nose. By the devil, she’s ugly! But her ass must have some enchantment, for he takes her everywhere with him and buys her boxes of scented soap whenever the Turk comes.” 242  B. Traven

“And why are they tormenting those poor beasts?” asked Antonio. The ox-­d rivers laughed uproariously. “Those poor beasts!” replied Santiago. “Yes, the poor beasts are being cruelly mistreated because in spite of the gags they can hear their screams.” And there was another outburst of laughter. “But they’re not little lambs with white fleece,” explained Pedro. “Beasts, poor beasts! No, those are not animals that are being tormented, you pack of asses! It’s twenty cutters, twenty ax-­men who are howling. They’ve hung them up for three or four hours because they haven’t produced, either today or yesterday or the day before, the tons of mahogany they’d been told to. You are innocent and ignorant, but within three days you’ll know what four tons are. Two tons are the normal production of an experienced cutter who’s as strong as an ox. And now that son of a bitch Don Acacio wants us to cut four tons a day. Whoever can’t cut that amount is hung from a tree by his four members, and even by five, for half the night. . . . Then the mosquitoes come humming around, because the thing happens at the edge of the swamps; not to mention the red ants, which arrive in battalions. But I don’t have to give you any more details. In less than a week you’ll know as much as I do—­and by personal experience. After that you’ll have been initiated into all the mysteries of a camp belonging to the Montellano brothers. You’ll be soldiers of the regiment of the hanged.” Somebody said: “I thought that all they did was flog you the way they do in the prison camps and coffee fincas.” It was Martín Trinidad who seemed to be so well informed. Martín Trinidad was one of the three ragged men who had joined the column on the road and whom Don Gabriel had engaged without a stamped contract. During the three long weeks of the trek through the jungle those three vagabonds had hardly exchanged a word with the Indians. They had always remained together in a group, talking among themselves and not appearing to bother about the others. This was the first time that Martín Trinidad had spoken to them. Santiago looked at him with half-­closed eyes and an air of suspicion, with the caution a real proletarian employs in the presence of an informer. “Where do you come from?” “I’m from Yucatán.” “That’s a long way! How did you get here? Are you running away?” “Let’s say that’s right, brother.” “Right, let’s say that. . . . When they’ve hanged you at least three times, I’ll begin to believe you. Because, look, if anyone here isn’t flogged or hanged we get suspicious—­he may be a squealing son of a ——­. And even to receive some lashes doesn’t prove anything, but to be strung up, to be well and duly hanged as El Rasgón, La Mecha, and El Faldón know how to do it—­that’s altogether another matter. After that there’s no comedy. I hope you understand Scenes from a Lumber Camp  243

what I’m going to tell you. Celso and Andrés will have a little chat with your two pals in order to know more about who you are. Here nobody’s afraid of anything, and nobody can match our skill in sweetly slicing the next fellow’s neck for almost no reason at all. It can happen within twenty paces of the hut without the interested party’s feeling it at all. Nor is any attention paid to how the loathsome soul of an informer goes down to hell. As you’ll see, we don’t give a thought to anything, not even their bullets—­you don’t shoot a man you expect four tons a day from. A dead man can’t fell trees—­isn’t that so? The worst they can do is hang us, and we’re so used to that now that it doesn’t help them any more. They used to beat us savagely when we couldn’t cut more than two tons. But we got hardened to beating, and it no longer served any purpose. On the contrary, the more they beat us, the less we produced. At that point the Montellanos thought up the scheme of hanging us. It’s horrible, it’s terrifying, but only while you’re strung up. Next day you can work again, and then you cut your four tons! This new invention has really worked for them, because the recollection, the mere recollection of the suffering, the terror of being strung up again, drives you to try to cut four tons, even though after one ton your hands are skinless. Only now we’ve almost got to the stage where even their new invention will become useless. There’s nothing they can do about Celso there, for instance. When they’ve hanged him for four hours and El Guapo arrives to take him down, Celso shouts: ‘Hi! you son of a bitch, here you come just when I feel fine. I’m sleeping peacefully, and this is the moment you choose, you pig, to come and disturb my dreams!’ Celso was the first. Now there are about six of us. This is the secret: human beings can become like oxen or donkeys and remain impassive when they’re beaten or goaded, but only if they’ve succeeded in suppressing all their natural instinct to rebel.” Martín Trinidad did not reply. . . .

Fidel and two of his comrades went to the large hut that served as their dormitory, picked up two lanterns, and made toward the underbrush. Eight men, eight shapeless masses, were twitching on the ground. They were incredibly doubled up, as if they had been cooped up in narrow boxes for six months. Each wore only a torn pair of white breeches. They groaned quietly, like sleepers half awakened. They squirmed on the ground and slowly stirred their limbs one after another to ease the stiffness, for their arms and legs were stiff and swollen. The ropes that had held them to the trees had been simply untied by the foremen, letting the men fall brutally to the ground. The foremen never worried about their victims, because they knew that the men would come to help them. Besides, the foremen were not required to watch over the health of hanged men. They could burst or not during the torture. The Montella244  B. Traven

nos and their bodyguards were not concerned with the possible death of the hanged men beyond the fact that a death meant the loss of a man’s labor. If a cutter was lazy or weak and could not produce three tons of mahogany daily, the loss was not great, the man could die quietly. For the worker, work is a duty. If he is lazy, he has no right to live. After all, if he dies, there is one less nuisance. The eyes of the hanged men were bloodshot and inflamed. Their bodies were covered with the bites of red ants and mosquitoes. Hundreds of ticks of all sizes had penetrated so deeply beneath their skins that infinite patience was necessary to extract them without leaving the heads behind, for if these were left under the skin the bites produced by the insects’ stings would become dangerous. Wherever a tick had worked its way in, there remained, even after its removal, a terrible itching that lasted as much as a week and compelled the victim to scratch himself incessantly. The bodies of the tortured men were still covered with ants, which now began to make their escape replete with their booty of blood or flesh. On and between their toes chiggers had left their eggs deposited deep in the flesh. Spiders had invaded their hair, and some of them had begun to weave webs to catch the flies attracted by the blood and sweat of the hanged men. On their legs could be seen the sticky tracks left by snails. The old hands picked their comrades up in their arms and carried them, still stupefied by pain, to the bank of the arroyo. They immersed them in the running water to alleviate the burning stings of mosquitoes and to rid them of ants and spiders. After this ducking they laid them out on the bank and began to stretch their limbs, massaging them at the same time. “This isn’t so bad,” explained Santiago to Antonio, who was helping him revive one of the cutters, Lorenzo. “It’s not so serious when they hang one near the huts. What is dangerous is when they do the hanging far from the camp as a special punishment. Because then the wild boars and wild dogs eat them, and they aren’t able to defend themselves in any way.” “There’s still another marvelous punishment, an invention of Don Severo,” said Matías, rubbing another of the hanged men. “Toward eleven o’clock in the morning they grab a man and take him to a place where there isn’t a tree or any shade of any kind. They take off his clothes, tie his hands and feet, and bury him in the hot sand to just below his mouth, leaving only his nose, his eyes, and the top of his head above ground, and all this under the caress of the sun. To you, you innocent lambs who don’t yet know anything about these things, I can say that when a man has been buried once in this way, just once, he shakes like a goat’s beard when he hears Don Félix say these pretty words: ‘Now you’ll cut your three tons, or I’ll have them bury you for three hours.’ Those three hours seem longer than a lifetime.” . . . When the hanged men were at last revived, thanks to the ministrations of their comrades, they could sip a little coffee and eat a few warmed-­over Scenes from a Lumber Camp  245

frijoles. They got up and, staggering like drunken men, moved toward their huts, where they collapsed at full length. It was nearly eleven o’clock at night.

At four o’clock the next morning La Mecha went into the huts to kick the sleeping men awake. They were still so full of pain and fright from the hanging of the preceding evening that, without washing their hands, they threw themselves on the pot of tepid beans, which they scooped up with their hands and ate ravenously. Then each of them drank a few gulps of coffee and, ax on shoulder, went off into the forest resolved to cut his four tons that day. Throughout the entire day they had only one idea in their heads, an idea that never left them in three weeks: “By all the saints in heaven, little God, make me able to cut my four tons so they won’t hang me!” But God, who came to earth two thousand years ago to save men, undoubtedly forgot these Indians. It is certain that at that time their country was still unknown. And when at last it was discovered, the first thing the conquistadores did was to plant a cross on the beach and say a Mass. In spite of that ceremony the Indians still suffer. “Certainly,” said Martín Trinidad unexpectedly some nights later, “the Lord came to the world two thousand years ago to save men. Next time we’ll save ourselves.” “Maybe so,” replied Pedro, one of the ox-­d rivers who had some ideas about religion and priests, “maybe so. But we’ll still have to wait another two thousand years for our turn to come.” Celso intervened dryly: “Why wait for the Saviour? Save yourself, brother, and then your savior will have arrived.”

246  B. Traven

President Díaz, Hero of the Americas James Creelman

While Porfirio Díaz certainly had his detractors, there were nevertheless many who greatly admired the considerable achievements of his extended regime. Between 1876 and 1910, peace and order prevailed, some 19,000 miles of railways were built, and 45,000 miles of telegraph wires were installed. Of course, each of these achievements had its downside: peace and order were established only at the cost of harsh violence and violations of human rights; most of the railways and many other key sectors of the economy were foreign-­owned; and the bulk of the population remained illiterate and impoverished. Intellectual apologists for the regime styled themselves “científicos,” or “scientific men,” because they justified the persistence of the regime—­and their own wealth and power—­on the basis of “positivist” philosophy glorifying hard science, which they maintained was applicable to all aspects of life. It is hardly surprising that among the dictator’s staunchest admirers were wealthy Mexicans and foreigners. One of the most effusive apologies appeared in the now-­ famous 1908 article by journalist James Creelman, published in Pearson’s Magazine. Creelman’s portrait of the venerable dictator is embarrassingly hagiographical, while his depiction of the Mexican masses is offensively patronizing. Despite the journalist’s simplistic analysis and gushing prose, the article proved to be of considerable historical import. Creelman quotes Díaz as saying that the Mexican people, having been nurtured by his stern dictatorship, were finally ready for democracy, and that he planned to step down at the end of his term in 1910. Some pretenders to power, including Francisco I. Madero, took these words seriously and launched energetic political campaigns. Díaz’s later change of heart would set the stage for the opening act of the bloody Mexican revolution. From the heights of Chapultepec Castle President Díaz looked down upon the venerable capital of his country, spread out on a vast plain, with a ring of mountains flung up grandly about it, and I, who had come nearly four thousand miles from New York to see the master and hero of modern Mexico—­ the inscrutable leader in whose veins is blended the blood of the primitive Mixtecs with that of the invading Spaniards—­watched the slender, erect form, the strong, soldierly head and commanding, but sensitive, countenance with an interest beyond words to express. 247

David Alfaro Siqueiros, De Porfirismo a la Revolución, 1957–67, mural, Museo Nacional de Historia, Chapultepec Castle, Mexico City. The revolutionary muralist Siqueiros depicts Porfirio Díaz surrounded by sycophants, his foot crushing the Constitution as he is entertained by dancing girls. By stepping on the Constitution, Díaz exhibits a casual disregard for presidential limitations. Siqueiros was one of los tres grandes—­ postrevolution muralists who developed techniques and iconography for portraying larger-­t han-­l ife heroes and events.

A high, wide forehead that slopes up to crisp white hair and overhangs deep-­set, dark brown eyes that search your soul, soften into inexpressible kindliness and then dart quick side looks—­terrible eyes, threatening eyes, loving, confiding, humorous eyes—­a straight, powerful, broad and somewhat fleshy nose, whose curved nostrils lift and dilate with every emotion; huge, virile jaws that sweep from large, flat, fine ears, set close to the head, to the tremendous, square, fighting chin; a wide, firm mouth shaded by a white mustache; a full, short, muscular neck, wide shoulders, deep chest; a curiously tense and rigid carriage that gives great distinction to a personality suggestive of singular power and dignity—­that is Porfirio Díaz in his seventy-­eighth year, as I saw him a few weeks ago. . . . It is the intense, magnetic something in the wide-­open, fearless, dark eyes and the sense of nervous challenge in the sensitive, spread nostrils, that seem to connect the man with the immensity of the landscape, as some elemental force. 248  James Creelman

There is not a more romantic or heroic figure in all the world, nor one more intensely watched by both friends and foes of democracy, than the soldier-­statesman, whose adventurous youth pales the pages of Dumas, and whose iron rule has converted the warring, ignorant, superstitious and impoverished masses of Mexico, oppressed by centuries of Spanish cruelty and greed, into a strong, steady, peaceful, debt-­paying and progressive nation. For twenty-­seven years he has governed the Mexican Republic with such power that national elections have become mere formalities. He might easily have set a crown upon his head. Yet to-­day, in the supremacy of his career, this astonishing man—­foremost figure of the American hemisphere and unreadable mystery to students of human government—­announces that he will insist on retiring from the Presidency at the end of his present term, so that he may see his successor peacefully established and that, with his assistance, the people of the Mexican Republic may show the world that they have entered serenely and preparedly upon the last complete phase of their liberties, that the nation is emerging from ignorance and revolutionary passion, and that it can choose and change presidents without weakness or war. . . . The President surveyed the majestic, sun-­l it scene below the ancient castle and turned away with a smile, brushing a curtain of scarlet trumpet-­flowers and vine-­l ike pink geraniums as he moved along the terrace toward the inner garden, where a fountain set among palms and flowers sparkled with water from the spring at which Montezuma used to drink, under the mighty cypresses that still rear their branches about the rock on which we stood. “It is a mistake to suppose that the future of democracy in Mexico has been endangered by the long continuance in office of one President,” he said quietly. “I can say sincerely that office has not corrupted my political ideals and that I believe democracy to be the one true, just principle of government, although in practice it is possible only to highly developed peoples.” For a moment the straight figure paused and the brown eyes looked over the great valley to where snow-­covered Popocatapetl lifted its volcanic peak nearly eighteen thousand feet among the clouds beside the snowy craters of Ixtaccihuatl—­a land of dead volcanoes, human and otherwise. “I can lay down the Presidency of Mexico without a single pang of regret, but I cannot cease to serve this country while I live,” he added. The sun shone full in the President’s face, but his eyes did not shrink from the ordeal. The green landscape, the smoking city, the blue tumult of mountains, the thin, exhilarating, scented air, seemed to stir him, and the color came to his cheeks as he clasped his hands behind him and threw his head backward. His nostrils opened wide. “You know that in the United States we are troubled about the question of electing a President for three terms?” He smiled and then looked grave, nodding his head gently and pursing President Díaz, Hero of the Americas  249

his lips. It is hard to describe the look of concentrated interest that suddenly came into his strong, intelligent countenance. “Yes, yes, I know,” he replied. “It is a natural sentiment of democratic peoples that their officials should be often changed. I agree with that sentiment.” It seemed hard to realize that I was listening to a soldier who had ruled a republic continuously for more than a quarter of a century with a personal authority unknown to most kings. Yet he spoke with a simple and convincing manner, as one whose place was great and secure beyond the need of hypocrisy. “It is quite true that when a man has occupied a powerful office for a very long time he is likely to begin to look upon it as his personal property, and it is well that a free people should guard themselves against the tendencies of individual ambition. “Yet the abstract theories of democracy and the practical, effective application of them are often necessarily different—­that is[,] when you are seeking for the substance rather than the mere form. “I can see no good reason why President Roosevelt should not be elected again if a majority of the American people desire to have him continue in office. I believe that he has thought more of his country than of himself. He has done and is doing a great work for the United States, a work that will cause him, whether he serves again or not, to be remembered in history as one of the great Presidents. . . . “Here in Mexico we have had different conditions. I received this Government from the hands of a victorious army at a time when the people were divided and unprepared for the exercise of the extreme principles of democratic government. To have thrown upon the masses the whole responsibility of government at once would have produced conditions that might have discredited the cause of free government. “Yet, although I got power at first from the army, an election was held as soon as possible and then my authority came from the people. I have tried to leave the Presidency several times, but it has been pressed upon me and I remained in office for the sake of the nation which trusted me. The fact that the price of Mexican securities dropped eleven points when I was ill at Cuer­ navaca indicates the kind of evidence that persuaded me to overcome my personal inclination to retire to private life. “We preserved the republican and democratic form of government. We defended the theory and kept it intact. Yet we adopted a patriarchal policy in the actual administration of the nation’s affairs, guiding and restraining popular tendencies, with full faith that an enforced peace would allow education, industry and commerce to develop elements of stability and unity in a naturally intelligent, gentle and affectionate people. “I have waited patiently for the day when the people of the Mexican Republic would be prepared to choose and change their government at every 250  James Creelman

election without danger of armed revolutions and without injury to the national credit or interference with national progress. I believe that day has come.” . . . “General Díaz,” I interrupted, “you have had an unprecedented experience in the history of republics. For thirty years the destinies of this nation have been in your hands, to mold them as you will; but men die, while nations must continue to live. Do you believe that Mexico can continue to exist in peace as a republic? Are you satisfied that its future is assured under free institutions?” It was worthwhile to have come from New York to Chapultepec Castle to see the hero’s face at that moment. Strength, patriotism, warriorship, prophet-­hood seemed suddenly to shine in his brown eyes. “The future of Mexico is assured,” he said in a clear voice. “The principles of democracy have not been planted very deep in our people, I fear. But the nation has grown and it loves liberty. Our difficulty has been that the people do not concern themselves enough about public matters for a democracy. The individual Mexican as a rule thinks much about his own rights and is always ready to assert them. But he does not think so much about the rights of others. He thinks of his privileges, but not of his duties. Capacity for self-­ restraint is the basis of democratic government, and self-­restraint is possible only to those who recognize the rights of their neighbors. “The Indians, who are more than half of our population, care little for politics. They are accustomed to look to those in authority for leadership instead of thinking for themselves. That is a tendency they inherited from the Spaniards, who taught them to refrain from meddling in public affairs and rely on the Government for guidance. “Yet I firmly believe that the principles of democracy have grown and will grow in Mexico.” “But you have no opposition party in the Republic, Mr. President. How can free institutions flourish when there is no opposition to keep the majority, or governing party, in check?” “It is true there is no opposition party. I have so many friends in the Republic that my enemies seem unwilling to identify themselves with so small a minority. I appreciate the kindness of my friends and the confidence of my country; but such absolute confidence imposes responsibilities and duties that tire me more and more. “No matter what my friends and supporters say, I retire when my present term of office ends, and I shall not serve again. I shall be eighty years old then. “My country has relied on me and it has been kind to me. My friends have praised my merits and overlooked my faults. But they may not be willing to deal so generously with my successor and he may need my advice and support; therefore I desire to be alive when he assumes office so that I may help him.” President Díaz, Hero of the Americas  251

He folded his arms over his deep chest and spoke with great emphasis. “I welcome an opposition party in the Mexican Republic,” he said. “If it appears, I will regard it as a blessing, not as an evil. And if it can develop power, not to exploit but to govern, I will stand by it, support it, advise it and forget myself in the successful inauguration of complete democratic government in the country. “It is enough for me that I have seen Mexico rise among the peaceful and useful nations. I have no desire to continue in the Presidency. This nation is ready for her ultimate life of freedom. At the age of seventy-­seven years I am satisfied with robust health. That is one thing which neither law nor force can create. I would not exchange it for all the millions of your American oil kings.” . . . “And which do you regard as the greatest force for peace, the army or the schoolhouse?” I asked. The soldier’s face flushed slightly and the splendid white head was held a little higher. “You speak of the present time?” “Yes.” “The schoolhouse. There can be no doubt of that. I want to see education throughout the Republic carried on by the national Government. I hope to see it before I die. It is important that all citizens of a republic should receive the same training, so that their ideals and methods may be harmonized and the national unity intensified. When men read alike and think alike they are more likely to act alike.” “And you believe that the vast Indian population of Mexico is capable of high development?” “I do. The Indians are gentle and they are grateful, all except for the Yacquis [sic] and some of the Mayas. They have the traditions of an ancient civilization of their own. They are to be found among the lawyers, engineers, physicians, army officers and other professional men.” Over the city drifted the smoke of many factories. “It is better than cannon smoke,” I said. “Yes,” he replied, “and yet there are times when cannon smoke is not such a bad thing. The toiling poor of my country have risen up to support me, but I cannot forget what my comrades in arms and their children have been to me in my severest ordeals.” There were actually tears in the veteran’s eyes. . . .

Such is Porfirio Díaz, the foremost man of the American hemisphere. What he has done, almost alone and in such a few years, for a people disorganized and degraded by war, lawlessness and comic-­opera politics, is the great inspiration of Pan-­A mericanism, the hope of the Latin-­A merican republics. 252  James Creelman

Whether you see him at Chapultepec Castle, or in his office in the National Palace, or in the exquisite drawing-­room of his modest home in the city, with his young, beautiful wife and his children and grand-­children by his first wife about him, or surrounded by troops, his breast covered with decorations conferred by great nations, he is always the same—­simple, direct and full of the dignity of conscious power. In spite of the iron government he has given to Mexico, in spite of a continuance in office that has caused men to say that he has converted a republic into an autocracy, it is impossible to look into his face when he speaks of the principle of popular sovereignty without believing that even now he would take up arms and shed his blood in defense of it. Only a few weeks ago Secretary of State [Elihu] Root summed up President Díaz when he said: “It has seemed to me that of all the men now living, General Porfirio Díaz, of Mexico, was best worth seeing. Whether one considers the adventurous, daring, chivalric incidents of his early career; whether one considers the vast work of government which his wisdom and courage and commanding character accomplished; whether one considers his singularly attractive personality, no one lives to-­day that I would rather see than President Díaz. If I were a poet I would write poetic eulogies. If I were a musician I would compose triumphal marches. If I were a Mexican I should feel that the steadfast loyalty of a lifetime could not be too much in return for the blessings that he had brought to my country. As I am neither poet, musician nor Mexican, but only an American who loves justice and liberty and hopes to see their reign among mankind progress and strengthen and become perpetual, I look to Porfirio Díaz, the President of Mexico, as one of the great men to be held up for the hero-­worship of mankind.”

President Díaz, Hero of the Americas  253

Gift of the Skeletons Anonymous

While many of the realities of the Porfiriato were grim, the regime was not able to suppress a vibrant popular culture. Anonymously written poetry often ridiculed the pretensions of the rich, lampooned the great dictator, or commented wryly on the injustices of early t­wentieth-­century Mexico. The calavera—­the dancing skeleton or grinning skull—­was a staple in the popular etchings of José Guadalupe Posada, which often illustrated popular political verse of the day. These skeletal figures served to remind Mexicans that death (perhaps catalyzed by popular revolt) would level even the most extreme social hierarchy. The Englishman’s a skeleton, So’s the Italiano. The Frenchman is a skeleton, too, Even Maximiliano. The cardinals and dukes and counts, The Pope himself in Rome; The Presidents of Nations And kings upon their thrones—­ In the grave, they all are equal: Just a heap of bones. The general is a skeleton, And all the general’s men. The colonels and comandants, And the crazy capitán. The sergeants are all lined up In military style; Next will come the corporals And the other rank-­and-­fi le—­ Soldiers by the hundreds Are just skeletons in a pile.

254

Artist José Guadalupe Posada achieved tremendous popularity in late nineteenth-­ and early twentieth-­century Mexico with his famous calavera etchings. From Posada’s Popular Mexican Prints, ed. Roberto Berdecio and Stanley Appelbaum (New York: Dover, 1972), 3.

The drunken little martyrs Are souls free of sin, Because they’ve paid their debts In this world that we are in. The innocent children suffer, In the cold, hard earth so deep, While the sick or those in prison Find no comfort as they weep. They should be angels up in heaven, Not just skeletons in a heap.

Gift of the Skeletons  255

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SPECIAL SECTION

What Can Photographs Tell Us about Mexico’s History? John Mraz

John Mraz is a research professor at the Instituto de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades, Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla. He considers himself an “audiovisual historian,” and he has been a pioneer in the use of photography, cinema, video, and digital productions in recounting the history of Mexico. In addition to writing numerous books and articles, Mraz has directed an award-­w inning documentary on the history of Mexican railroad workers and is currently working on a production on agrarian struggle in Puebla after the Mexican revolution. In this essay, he examines how photographs can be incorporated into historical analysis in a rigorous way, rather than as simple illustrations. He notes from what sources they can be obtained, how they uncover the presence of people who are absent in written documents, provide documentation of elements that are “invisible” to past societies, and offer evidence of material and popular culture, social relations, and daily life activities. As “traces” of yesterday’s surfaces, photographs appear to offer a window onto history. It is not that simple: photographs are constructed messages, composed through decisions made during the photographic act—­including the selection of subject, framing, focus, light, and lens—­as well as later alterations of the original image in the darkroom or with the computer. However, notwithstanding the dense system of mediations that enter into making a photograph, it is still different from other visual media because of its unique capacity to embalm the appearance of things in the world. In that sense, an argument can be made for photographic “transparency,” although their infinite itinerancy in today’s hypervisual world means that an image’s significance is almost always determined by its context of reproduction, which is usually provided by texts. A photographic image is made with great ease; hundreds can be taken in the space of minutes without much forethought because details can be discovered later. A product of mechanical reproduction, photography’s singular capability to include aspects that the photographer may have had no 257

Photo 1. Feminist rally, Mexico City. Photograph by Hermanos Mayo, May 10, 1980, Archivo General de la Nación, Fondo Hermanos Mayo, Concentrated Section, “Manifestación de mujeres.”

intention of documenting leaves historians with the possibility of discovering things that were invisible to the image-­maker. This capacity for “unintentional content” is a significant factor in contemplating photography’s value to the historical enterprise. Consider, for example, the picture by the Hermanos Mayo of preparations for a feminist march in Mexico City in 1980 (photo 1). As a working photojournalist (and part of a collective who maintained control of their negatives in order to later sell prints to other buyers), Mayo’s job was to cover the march in its entirety. Photos of preliminary activities, such as the painting of posters and the preparation of banners, provide important background material for reporting on this event (as well as contributing to the collective’s archive). In the middle of this image we see a young man wearing a Boston College T-­shirt. The use of clothing such as sweatsuits, jackets, caps, sweaters, and other apparel decorated with the logos of U.S. colleges and professional sports teams is so common in Mexico that people don’t notice it. Despite their ubiquity (or, better, because of it), these emblems are largely invisible to Mexicans. On many occasions, I have shown the Mayo photograph to Mexican audiences and posed this question: “You are historians one hundred years from now. What can you find in this photo which is an important artifact about Mexico in the twentieth century?” They often don’t see the Boston College T-­shirt, and Mayo probably didn’t either. Its very invisibility is ominous, for it is an eloquent symptom of what I would describe as cultural neocolonialism. 258  John Mraz

As dense “technical” images, photographs would seem to offer unlimited possibilities in developing visual social histories, for pictures can be gleaned from a wealth of sources. One of the richest founts is photojournalism, and the archives of the collectives formed by the Casasola dynasty, the Hermanos Mayo, and Díaz, Delgado y García contain among them some seven or eight million negatives.1 The usefulness of photojournalist collections varies in relation to the information that accompanies the archival negatives. Thus, it is unfortunate that, even in the best-­catalogued archive, the Hermanos Mayo, the data is limited to minimal notes on the negative envelopes. Although locating the photographs in the publications where they originally appeared is an arduous task, it would open up a gold mine of information. One place these images are found together with extensive textual descriptions is the Departamento del Trabajo of the Archivo General de la Nación; here, workers’ complaints and inspectors’ reports about labor and living conditions sometimes accompany interesting images. Another source are family photo albums; these can often offer invaluable insights into the past if interviews are carried out in relation to the pictures. Photographs taken for political purposes can also be useful, as in the case of Guillermo Treviño, the Puebla Communist and railroad union militant, who documented labor struggles from the 1920s until the 1970s. Finally, foreigners can offer alternative insights, such as the pictures of C.  B. Waite, Winfield Scott, William Henry Jackson, François Aubert, or Abel Briquet. Photographs can provide important “clues” that we could follow to open up research possibilities about things that have not yet been discovered in written documents. Women participated actively in the Mexican revolution and, though little has been written about that, they appear constantly in photographs. For example, photographic images have been the primary stimulus for research on female Zapatista commanders. We know little about the Salgadista-­Zapatista-­Maderista colonel, Amparo Salgado, photographed by the only woman to extensively capture the Mexican revolution, Sara Castrejón (photo 2). And, what we do know is a result of interviews that were carried out as a result of finding this image. We still know nothing whatsoever about other women officers such as Colonel Carmen Robles, “La Costeña,” who was linked to the Zapatista-­Maderista army in 1911 (and appears in at least three extant photos), or another figure who served in those same forces, Colonel Esperanza Echevarría, beyond the fact that both appear in photos. Without identifications that “anchor” photographs to their reality, their aesthetic force can sometimes generate myths. The famous photograph of “Adelita” offers one example, for the woman hanging out of the train has become the paradigmatic image of the soldadera in the Mexican revolution. As can be seen in photo 3, the woman we have come to know as “Adelita” is an individual who has been cropped out of a negative from which the right half has been removed. Of course, that half of the original glass plate is broken, What Can Photographs Tell Us about Mexico’s History?   259

Photo 2. This 1911 photograph by Sara Castrejón, featuring the Zapatista Colonel Amparo Salgado, is the first of a woman revolutionary in Mexico. Cartridge belts wrap around the colonel’s dress, and the rifle in her hand is not just a prop, as was often the case in studio portraits taken during the revolution. From the archive of Consuelo Castrejón.

but we can still see a group of women standing on the platforms of the train cars. When we ask who Adelita was, her location in the train may provide an important clue. Soldaderas usually traveled on top of, or underneath, the cars. Hence, these women may well have been food vendors who would quickly drop off the train before it left the station, or they could have been cooks attached to a car designed to feed the troops. The image, as a whole, could contribute to our historical knowledge about the revolution, for it provides a “lead” about the living conditions of some women, as well as about the Maderista army in the train. The cropped version of “Adelita” only serves as another revolutionary myth, because the vitality evinced by this woman makes her a repository for, and symbol of, all the attributes of the legendary soldaderas.2 The basic elements present in photographs that could be used to develop social histories can be defined without unnecessary complications.3 The first is the presence of people who are often excluded from written texts. Women, children, and workers are usually buried under the proclamations of elite 260  John Mraz

Photo 3. “Adelita” and other women, Mexico City. Photograph by Gerónimo Hernández, April 1912, Fototeca Nacional del inah , Colección Archivo Casasola, 5670.

male governing bodies, but they are present in photographs to be reclaimed for history. For example, children are a pervasive presence in Mexico’s adult world, most often appearing as workers. Although the 1917 Constitution forbade child labor, photo 4 shows us a little girl in a Mexico City match factory in 1919. Social relations are also documented in photographs, which can speak volumes about class, race, and gender, both in showing their existence as well as in representing their transformations. Images that document the poor carrying the better-­off across flooded streets in Mexico City are a significant demonstration of class difference during the Porfiriato. Testimonies of demands relating to class relations are evident in the banners of protest marches from 1911 in which workers reclaim the right to have their Sundays off. An instance of class struggle can be seen in a 1924 photograph taken to document foreign management employees (dressed in their suits and ties), who replaced striking workers to load oil barrels, in violation of labor agreements (photo 5). Photography embalms gender relations as well. Hugo Brehme captured these two children as they played out the roles assigned them: the girl washing clothes, the boy pretending to be a boatman (photo 6). The power of photographs to capture the relations of class, race, and gender so central to history is demonstrated in an image of a shoe factory during the 1930s. There, dark-­skinned women labor under the gaze of white, well-­d ressed bosses and their visitors (photo 7). What Can Photographs Tell Us about Mexico’s History?   261

Photo 4. Girl working in a match factory, Mexico City. Juan de Beraza (intellectual author), 1919, Archivo General de la Nación, Departamento del Trabajo.

Photo 5. Management employees working in place of striking oil workers, Pueblo Viejo, Veracruz. Photographer unknown, 1924, Archivo General de la Nación, Departamento del Trabajo.

Photo 6. Indian children, Canal de Ixtacalco, Mexico City. Photograph by Hugo Brehme, ca. 1920, Fototeca Nacional del inah , Colección Hugo Brehme, 372055.

Photo 7. Executives, visitors, and women workers in a shoe factory, Mexico City. Photographer unknown, possibly Enrique Díaz, ca. 1930, Archivo General de la Nación, Fondo Díaz, Delgado y García, Caja 27/4.

Photo 8. Boys on train, Oriental, Puebla. Photographer unknown, ca. 1945, from the archive of John Mraz.

Photographs can also document particular expressions of mentalities. For instance, families in the small, isolated town of Oriental, Puebla, often went to pose in the railroad yard. Founded as a railroad junction, the village offered no other way of making a living than working for that industry, and diversions were similarly limited. An image of young boys posed on the fronts of trains demonstrates the centrality of them in their choice of “studio backdrop” (photo 8). An informant for my production Made on Rails: A History of the Mexican Railroad Workers described how every male family member was incorporated into that labor: “All of us who live here work for the railroad. You work for the railroad or you leave, because there is no other way to make a living.” 4 Photographic absence can be as telling as presence: here, the nonpresence of girls in the family photos taken around the trains is revealing of gender relations. It is crucial to insist that I am not arguing for psychological readings of photographs. The concept of mentalities is used here to denote long-­term, deeply ingrained sociocultural patterns; the term psychology, on the other hand (at least for its use here), describes an immediate emotional state: sadness, joy, disappointment, chagrin. Making psychological judgments from 264  John Mraz

“apparent” expressions of sentiment—­for example, deducing depression from a nonsmiling face—­is a great temptation.5 However, the problem with this approach becomes obvious if we consider exposure times. When films and lenses were slow, people did not look happy because they could not hold a smile for the length of time required; it became a blur. Thus, they necessarily had to maintain a straight face (which also may have had something to do with the ordeal of posing and the conventions that developed around that). Today, however, exposure times are usually in the range of from 1/250th to 1/60th of a second, so subjects can “smile for the camera” with no difficulty. Because of the slow exposure times of earlier eras, it would be imprudent to make any psychological analyses of subjects from those periods, just as it would be inadvisable to do so based on the tiny fraction of a second congealed by modern technology. My position can be illustrated by comparing two photos of Zapatistas in Sanborns restaurant during their 1914 occupation of Mexico City (see photos 9 and 10). In the first picture, the two men are almost incarnations of the image that many Mexico City residents had of them: scarred, violent men who appear ready to cut your throat for the pleasure of it. In the second, they look like harmless campesinos, a bit disoriented by finding themselves in an unfamiliar situation. Neither of these readings offers us the “truth” about the Zapatistas. What they do instead is more important: they evidence the fact that these men occupied a space that had formerly been denied them. Another important area in which photographs can contribute to our understanding of social history is in the representation of material culture and daily life. Photographic images of the most mundane aspects of human existence, such as eating, drinking, housing, transportation, disasters, and expressions of popular culture, can be fundamental in allowing us to reconstruct the everyday lives of people in the past. They preserve these phenomena as perhaps no other medium could. However, in order truly to understand what these images convey, we must develop knowledge of the contexts in which they were originally taken. Eating and drinking are fundamental activities of life that are often overlooked in written histories. Modern media can be important to show how Mexican women grind corn on metates to make nixtamal, how they shape the corn dough into tortillas, and then cook it on their planches, for example. Photo 11 demonstrates another way that one poor woman acquired food: by sweeping up the rice thrown at a wedding! Water vendors were a favorite subject of nineteenth-­century costumbrista paintings and tourist postcards. A low-­angle shot of women waiting under a hot sun amid seemingly endless lines of old and rusty tin receptacles for water during the 1950s can be analyzed as a document of one facet of a poor woman’s day around 1950 (photo 12). It also shows how the proletarian communities were furnished with the precious liquid, and is thus a testimony to the way in which the What Can Photographs Tell Us about Mexico’s History?   265

Photo 9. Zapatistas in Sanborns Restaurant, Mexico City. Photograph by Casasola, 1914, Fototeca Nacional del inah , Colección Archivo Casasola, 33532.

Photo 10. Zapatistas in Sanborns Restaurant, Mexico City. Photographer unknown, 1914, Fototeca Nacional del inah , Colección Archivo Casasola, 6219.

Photo 11. Woman sweeping up rice after wedding, Mexico City. Photograph by Hermanos Mayo, ca. 1950, Archivo General de la Nación, Fondo Mayo, Concentrated Section, “Arroz en las bodas.”

Photo 12. Women waiting for water, Mexico City. Photograph by Hermanos Mayo, ca. 1950, Archivo General de la Nación, Fondo Mayo, Concentrated Section, “Agua potable.”

Photo 13. Miners’ housing, Mapimí, Durango. Photographer unknown, 1920, Archivo General de la Nación, Departamento del Trabajo.

pri (Partido Institucional Revolucionario) practiced clientelism, for the “Free Service” came courtesy of the city’s government. Housing is yet another of the mundane yet vital elements of material culture that are embalmed in photographs. In photo 13, we see the houses provided for miners in Mapimí, Durango, in 1920. The photograph was probably taken by an inspector for the secretary of labor in response to the workers’ complaints, and was sent to the Secretariat, along with a description of their living conditions. Although the image itself is eloquent, the accompanying letter, conserved in the Ramo de Trabajo, provides us with insight into the marginal existence of these people: The company provides houses of three square meters. They consist of one poorly built room without kitchen, bathroom, light, or water. They are fit for one person, but the company forces us to accept others in them without any concern for the inhabitants, so there are usually about four or five people from different families living together. The bathrooms—­one for men and another for women—­are placed next to the steepest part of the cliffs, and a slight carelessness on the part of anyone sitting there could result in their falling down the cliffs to their death. Another image of housing from the archives of the Ramo de Trabajo shows us a woman with a child crawling under a fence in Tampico in 1923 (see photo 14). A worker, Luis F. Becerril, took the photo (almost certainly 268  John Mraz

Photo 14. Woman and child going out to the street, Tampico. Photograph by Luis F. Becerril, 1923, Archivo General de la Nación, Departamento del Trabajo.

posing what was evidently a quotidian scene), and sent it to the secretary of labor with a letter detailing their complaints. It appears that the Mexican government had ordered the Pierce Oil Company to put more distance between its tanks and the workers’ houses, to avoid disasters. In order not to have to relocate their tanks, Pierce constructed a fence so that the workers would move, thereby leaving the families no other alternative than to crawl under it in order to reach their homes. Photographs are also an excellent medium for representing labor conditions. In photo 15, we see women in the Buen Tono cigarette company, seated neatly in rows at their workspaces. While we might find this situation claustrophobic, the Buen Tono was a model factory of the Porfiriato, with a highly developed consciousness of modern media’s importance in demonstrating the country’s orderly development so as to attract investment. Photo 16 shows us the other side of the coin: Filgenio Vargas and Jorge Miranda took this picture of fellow oil workers, dead and injured by a burst line in Tepexintla, Veracruz, on January 4, 1922. They sent it to the secretary of labor, with a note: “Because the company provided no medical assistance to the victims, we felt the necessity to write down their names and take some photos to try to get them attention.” Not only were the workers denied medical assistance, but Vargas and Miranda were also fired for having complained. Hazardous working situations abound in Mexico, as can be seen in photo 17, a 1951 picture taken during the construction of Mexico City’s Latin American Tower, where the absence of safety gear is conspicuous. Women may not normally What Can Photographs Tell Us about Mexico’s History?   269

Photo 15. Women working in Buen Tono cigarette factory, Mexico City. Photograph by Underwood & Underwood, ca. 1903, Library of Congress, reproduction no. lc -­usz 62-1395.

face such dramatically dangerous circumstances, but photo 18, which depicts a woman washing clothes next to a railroad car, shows us the sort of daily labor to which they are condemned. This picture was taken in Puebla by Guillermo Treviño to document the living conditions of railroad workers and their families, as part of the demands of the strike of 1958–59. Getting to and from work can be an ordeal in itself, as in the image of a crowded Mexico 270  John Mraz

Photo 16. Dead and injured oil workers, Tepexintla. Photograph by Filgenio Vargas and Jorge Miranda, January 4, 1922, Archivo General de la Nación, Departamento del Trabajo.

City bus in the 1940s, equipped with straps provided for people to hang from (photo 19). Popular culture and leisure activities are also preserved in photographs. One interesting example is offered by the image of Zapatistas visiting the Basilica of the Virgin of Guadalupe during their occupation of Mexico City in 1914 (photo 20). The cards of the saint stuck in their sombreros provide evidence of her importance for that movement, the only revolutionary army What Can Photographs Tell Us about Mexico’s History?   271

Photo 17. Construction worker, Latin American Tower, Mexico City. The worker’s lack of any safety equipment testifies to his extraordinarily hazardous working conditions. The city beneath him spreads to the horizon; Mexico City’s population more than doubled between 1950 and 1970. Photograph by Faustino Mayo, 1951, Archivo General de la Nación, Fondo Mayo, Concentrated Section, “Torre Latinoamericana.”

Photo 18. Woman washing clothes, Puebla. The photographer was a Puebla railroad union militant who documented labor struggles from the 1920s to the ’70s. The woman’s bright smile belies her precarity: this picture was taken during a railroad workers’ strike from 1957 to 1958. Photograph by Guillermo Treviño, 1958, from the archive of John Mraz.

Photo 19. Crowded bus with straps for “hangers-­on,” Mexico City. Transportation in the city was hard to come by in the late 1930s and early 1940s due to gasoline shortages, which often led to bus operation suspensions and stranded passengers. Photograph by Hermanos Mayo, ca. 1940s, Archivo General de la Nación, Fondo Mayo, Concentrated Section, “Camiones urbanos.”

Photo 20. Zapatistas visiting the Basilica de la Virgen de Guadalupe, Mexico City. Photograph by Casasola, 1914, Fototeca Nacional del inah , Colección Archivo Casasola, 6267.

Photo 21. Television-­H iFi set in a poor home, Mexico City. Photograph by Hermanos Mayo, January 1957, Archivo General de la Nación, Fondo Mayo, Chronological Section, 10837.

to carry her banners, as well as evidence of her constant presence in Mexican history. Television has become as big a part of life in Mexico as in the rest of the world. Photo 21 shows a television set and record player in a poor Mexican house in 1956, where multiple beds occupy the same space as the “Entertainment Center.” The chairs in a line are probably rented to neighbors, whose money is used to satisfy the monthly installment payment. Easter Week is a time to escape Mexico City’s crowds, if you have the money to do so. If not, then you may find yourself among the multitudes at a packed public pool, as in “Belly Flop” (photo 22), taken by Francisco Mata Rosas. Earthquakes occur so often in Mexico that they sometimes seem as much a part of daily life as eating or working. In photo 23, Marco Antonio Cruz captured Tlatelolco Plaza ten minutes after the devastating 1985 earthquake struck Mexico City. If any doubts remain about what photographs can tell us about history, ask yourself how many words you would need to describe this scene.

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Photo 22. “Belly Flop,” public pool during Easter Week, Mexico City. This photo captures an aspect of Mexican life—­leisure—­t hat is often overlooked in written histories. The public pool is packed with civilians who could not get away from the Easter Week crowds. Photograph by Francisco Mata Rosas, 1986, from the archive of Francisco Mata Rosas.

Photo 23. Tlatelolco plaza, ten minutes after the earthquake struck, Mexico City. Photograph by Marco Antonio Cruz, September 19, 1985, from the archive of Marco Antonio Cruz.

Notes 1. The Casasola Archive is property of the Fototeca Nacional del Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia; the collections of the Hermanos Mayo and Díaz, Delgado y García are found in the Archivo General de la Nación. Both archives also contain many images by other photographers. 2. I have discussed this icon in some depth in Photographing the Mexican Revolution: Commitments, Testimonies, Icons (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2012), 240–45. 3. I have dealt with this question extensively in History and Modern Media: A Personal Journey (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2021). 4. John Mraz, Made on Rails: A History of the Mexican Railroad Workers (1988), distributed by the Cinema Guild. 5. The classic example of this is Michael Lesy’s Wisconsin Death Trip (New York: Pantheon, 1973).

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V Revolution

The Mexican revolution was the defining event in modern Mexican history. The long, bloody, chaotic war began when Porfirio Díaz, ruler of Mexico since 1876, declared in 1908 that Mexico was ready for democracy and, accordingly, he would not seek another presidential term. But when Francisco I. Madero, the scion of a wealthy Coahuila family, launched an energetic political campaign that threatened to land him in the presidency, Don Porfirio had him arrested and prepared for a standard round of election-­fi xing. This time, however, the aging dictator (whom pundits had taken to calling Don Perpétuo) badly miscalculated. Radical activists like Ricardo Flores Magón had for years been stirring up opposition to the regime. By mid-­1910, economic downturns and the dictator’s increasing harshness prepared Mexicans to support that opposition. Ultimately, when the more moderate Madero called for an armed rebellion to ignite in November 1910, that call was seconded by a broad cross-­ section of Mexican society. A decade of violence ensued, as a bewildering array of interests clashed. What did it all mean? Luis Cabrera, perhaps the greatest ideologue of the revolution, declared that “La revolución es revolución”—­arguing that the “fundamental purpose” of revolutions is “transcendental,” for they “seek to change the laws, customs, and the existing social structure in order to establish a more just arrangement.” The Mexican revolution brought change, certainly, but the question of whether the postrevolutionary arrangement was more “just” remains hotly debated. Indeed, even the appropriate case of the initial letter in revolution is a matter of some dispute. We have chosen the lowercase r, to distinguish what began as a multifaceted, distinctly local process from the postrevolutionary regime’s subsequent appropriation and simplification of that process—­after which the revolution was always rendered in the upper case by the Party of the Institutional Revolution. The readings that follow present the views of politicians, peasants and poets, radicals and reactionaries, the well-­heeled and the dispossessed. We hope they will give readers a sense of why the interests involved in the 1910

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revolution were so difficult to reconcile, why violence came to beget violence, and why the passions unleashed proved so hard to pacify. We also provideassessments of the regimes of reconstruction (roughly 1920–34) and radicalization (1934–40), to enable readers to better understand the complex forces that contested and represented the revolution’s consolidation and, in the process, shaped modern Mexico.

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Land and Liberty Ricardo Flores Magón

Like any great social movement, the Mexican revolution had many precursors. None was quite so radical or influential as Ricardo Flores Magón. Born in 1874 in a small village in the impoverished southern state of Oaxaca, Flores Magón studied law before settling into a career in journalism. In 1900, together with his brother Enrique, he founded the journal Regeneración, which frontally criticized the Díaz dictatorship. Within the year, Flores Magón was in prison, and by the end of 1903 he was forced into exile in the United States. In 1905 Flores Magón helped to found the Mexican Liberal Party in St. Louis, Missouri. He spent most of the remainder of his life in exile, agitating constantly against the Porfirian regime through the pages of several journals, including Regeneración, El Hijo del Ahuizote, and Revolución. In the United States, he was repeatedly incarcerated on charges of violating the neutrality and espionage laws. In 1918 he was sent to Leavenworth prison in Kansas, where he died in November 1922. Despite the name of his party, Flores Magón’s politics were the antithesis of turn-­ of-­the-­century liberalism. He was, in fact, a staunch partisan of the international anarchist movement, which declared private property to be theft, denounced governments of all stripes, and advocated “direct action” in place of political participation. His writings envision self-­governing, self-­reliant, socialistic communities. It is not surprising, therefore, that Flores Magón did not have good relations with most of the revolutionary factions, which tended, to a greater or lesser degree, to cleave to nineteenth-­century liberal traditions (note his disdain for Madero expressed in his dismissal of the anti-­reelectionists). Ultimately, his work found its greatest resonance in the agrarian movement of Emiliano Zapata, which adopted the slogan “Land and Liberty” as its own. The essay reproduced below appeared in Regeneración on November 19, 1910, one day before the Mexican revolution officially broke out. The fruit, well-­r ipened by ardent revolt, is about to fall—­fruit bitter to all who have become flushed with pride, thanks to a situation which brings honour, wealth and distinction to those who make the sorrows and slavery of humanity the foundation of their pleasures; but fruit sweet and pleasant to all who have regarded as beneath their dignity the filthinesses of the beasts who, through a night that has lasted thirty-­four years, have robbed, violated, 279

slain, cheated and played the traitor, while hiding their crimes beneath the mantle of the law and using official position to shield them from punishment. Who are they that fear the Revolution? They who have provoked it; they who, by oppression and exploitation of the masses, have sought to bring the victims of their infamies despairingly into their power; they who, by injustice and rapine, have awakened sleeping consciences and made honourable men throughout the world turn pale with indignation. The Revolution is now about to break out at any moment. We, who during so many years have followed attentively the social and political life of Mexico, cannot deceive ourselves. The symptoms of a formidable cataclysm leave no room for doubt that we are on the eve of an uplift and a crash, a rising and a fall. At last, after four and thirty years of shame, the Mexican people is about to raise its head, and at last, after this long night the black edifice, which has been strangling us beneath its weight, is about to crumble into dust. It is timely that we should here repeat what already we have said so often; that this movement, springing from despair, must not be a blind effort to free ourselves from an enormous burden, but a movement in which instinct must be dominated almost completely by reason. We [Liberals] must try to bring it about that this movement shall be guided by the light of Science. If we fail to do this, the Revolution now on the point of coming to the surface will serve merely to substitute one President for another, one master for another. We must bear in mind that the necessary thing is that the people shall have bread, shelter, land to cultivate; we must bear in mind that no government, however honourable, can decree the abolition of misery. The people themselves—­the hungry and disinherited—­are they who must abolish misery, by taking into their possession, as the very first step, the land which by natural right should not be monopolized by a few but must be the property of every human being. No one can foretell the lengths to which the impending Revolution’s task of recovery will go; but, if we fighters undertake in good faith [to help] it as far as possible along the road; if, when we pick up the Winchester, we go forth decided not to elevate to power another master but redeem the proletariat’s rights; if we take the field pledged to conquer that economic liberty which is the foundation on which all liberties rest, and the condition without which no liberties can exist; if we make this our purpose, we shall start it on a road worthy of this epoch. But if we are carried away by the desire for easy triumph; if, seeking to make the struggle shorter, we desert our own radicalism and aims, so incompatible with those of the purely bourgeois and conservative parties—­then we shall have done only the work of bandits and assassins; for the blood spilled will serve merely to increase the power of the bourgeoisie and the caste that today possesses wealth, and, after the triumph, that caste will fasten anew on the proletariat the chain forged with the pro-

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letariat’s own blood, its own sacrifices, its own martyrdom, which will have conquered power for the bourgeoisie. It is necessary, therefore, proletarians; it is necessary therefore, disinherited, that your thought be not confused. The conservative and bourgeois parties speak to you of liberty, of justice, of law, of honourable government; and they tell you that when you replace with others those who are now in power, you will have that liberty, justice, law and honourable government. Be not deceived! What you need is to secure the well-­being of your families—­their daily bread—­and this no government can give you. You yourselves must conquer these good things, and you must do it by taking immediate possession of the land, which is the original source of all wealth. Understand this well; no government will be able to give you that, for the law defends the “right” of those who are withholding wealth. You yourselves must take it, despite the law, despite the government, despite the pretended right of property. You yourselves must take it in the name of natural justice; in the name of the right of every human being to life and the development of his physical and intellectual powers. When you are in possession of the land you will have liberty and justice, for liberty and justice are not decreed but are the result of economic independence. They spring from the fact that the individual is able to live without depending on a master, and to enjoy, for himself and his family, the product of his toil. Take, then, the land! The law tells you that you must not take it, since it is private property; but the law which so instructs you was a law written by those who are holding you in slavery and a law that needs to be supported by force is a law that does not respond to general needs. If the law were the result of general agreement it would not need upholding by the policeman, the jailer, the judge, the hangman, the soldier and the official. The law has been imposed on you, and these arbitrary impositions we, as men of dignity, must answer with rebellion. Therefore, to the struggle! Imperious, unrestrainable, the Revolution will not tarry. If you would be really free, group yourselves beneath the [Liberal] Party’s banner of freedom; but, if you merely want the strange pleasure of shedding blood, and shedding your own by “playing at soldiers,” group yourselves under other banners—­that of the Anti-­reelectionists, for example, which, after you have done “playing at soldiers,” will put you anew under the yoke of the employer and government. In that case you will enjoy the great pleasure of changing the old President, with whom already you were becoming disgusted, for a spick and span new one, fresh from the mint. Comrades, the question is a grave one. I understand that you are ready for the fight; but fight so that it shall be of benefit to the poor. Hitherto all your revolutions have profited the classes in power, because you have no clear con-

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ception of your rights and interests, which, as you now know, are completely opposed to the rights and interests of the intellectual and wealthy classes. It is to the interest of the rich that the poor shall be poor eternally, for the poverty of the masses guarantees their wealth. If there were not men who found themselves compelled to work for other men, the rich would be under the necessity of doing something useful, of producing something of general utility, that they might be able to exist. No longer would there be slaves they could exploit. I repeat, it is not possible to foretell the lengths in which the approaching Revolution’s task of recovery will go; what we must do is to endeavour to get all we can. It would be a great step in advance if the land were to become the property of all; and if among the revolutionists there should . . . be the strength, the conscious strength, sufficient to gain more than that; the basis would be laid for further recoveries which the proletariat by force of circumstances would conquer. Forward, comrades! Soon you will hear the first shots; soon the shout of rebellion will thunder from the throats of the oppressed. Let not a single one of you fail to second this movement, launching, with all the power of conviction, that supremest of cries, Land and Liberty!

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Plan of Ayala Emiliano Zapata and Others

The revolution headed by Francisco I. Madero relied heavily on the support of diverse groups and interests. Prominent among these were peasants who demanded an end to government repression and immediate agrarian reform, and who were encouraged by vague proposals contained in Madero’s Plan of San Luis Potosí. When he attained power, however, Madero’s message to those peasants was that they must disarm and demobilize before reforms could be contemplated. Meanwhile, he collaborated with the federal army and many other elements of the old regime. Not surprisingly, he quickly lost the support of agrarian elements, the most prominent of which were the southern forces of Emiliano Zapata. In 1911 Zapata and his followers issued their Magna Carta, the Plan of Ayala, from a small town in southern Puebla. For as long as the Zapatista movement survived, it regarded the Plan of Ayala as practically a sacred text. Interestingly, the plan was rather conservative, as revolutionary documents go. It included a rather unfashionable reference to God, while in agrarian matters it did not go as far, for instance, as the law issued in early 1915 by the rival faction of Venustiano Carranza, which provided for lands to be granted to any village that could prove it had insufficient land for its needs. The Plan of Ayala sought not to eliminate the hacienda but to have it coexist with the peasant villages. Liberating Plan of the sons of the State of Morelos, affiliated with the Insurgent Army which defends the fulfillment of the Plan of San Luis, with the reforms that it believes necessary to increase the welfare of the Mexican Fatherland. The undersigned, constituted into a Revolutionary Junta to sustain and carry out the promises made to the country by the Revolution of 20 November 1910, solemnly declare before the civilized world which sits in judgment on us, and before the Nation to which we belong and which we love, the propositions we have formulated to end the tyranny that oppresses us and to redeem the Fatherland from the dictatorships imposed upon us, which are outlined in the following plan: 1. Taking into consideration that the Mexican people, led by don Francisco I. Madero, shed their blood to reclaim their freedom and to demand

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rights that had been trampled upon, and not so that one man could seize power, violating the sacred principles that he swore to defend with the slogan “Effective Suffrage and No Reelection,” thereby insulting the faith, cause, and liberties of the people; taking into consideration that the man to whom we refer is don Francisco I. Madero, the same who initiated the aforementioned revolution, who imposed his will and influence upon the Provisional Government of the ex-­president of the Republic, licenciado Francisco León de la Barra, thus causing much bloodshed and many misfortunes to the fatherland in a cunning and ridiculous fashion, having no goals to satisfy apart from his own personal ambitions, his boundless instincts for tyranny, and his profound disrespect for the preexisting laws emanating from the immortal Constitution of 1857, written with the revolutionary blood of Ayutla. Taking into account that the so-­called chief of the Liberating Revolution of Mexico, don Francisco I. Madero, due to his great weakness and lack of integrity, did not bring to a happy conclusion the Revolution that he began with the help of God and of the people, for he left intact most of the governing powers and corrupt elements of oppression from the dictatorial Government of Porfirio Díaz, which can never represent the National sovereignty; they are terrible enemies of ourselves and of the principles we defend, bringing misfortune to the country and opening new wounds in the breast of the Fatherland, making it drink its own blood; taking also into account that the aforementioned don Francisco I. Madero, current president of the Republic, tried to avoid fulfilling the promises he made to the Nation in the Plan of San Luis Potosí, adding the aforementioned promises to the Ciudad Juárez treaties, nullifying, persecuting, imprisoning, or killing the revolutionary elements who helped him to occupy the high post of president of the Republic, by means of false promises and numerous intrigues against the Nation. Taking into consideration that the oft-­mentioned Francisco I. Madero has tried to silence the people with the brute force of bayonets and to drown them in blood when they ask, solicit, or demand that the promises of the Revolution be fulfilled, calling them bandits and rebels, condemning them to a war of extermination, without conceding or granting any of the guarantees that reason, justice, and the law prescribe; taking equally into account that the president of the Republic, Francisco I. Madero, has made of Effective Suffrage a bloody mockery by imposing, against the will of the people, licenciado José María Pino Suárez as Vice P ­ resident of the Republic, imposing also the governors of the States, designating such men as General Ambrosio Figueroa, cruel tyrant of the people of Morelos; and scandalously collaborating with the científico party, the feudal hacendados, and the oppressive caciques, enemies of the Revolution he proclaimed, with the aim of forging new chains and following the mold of a new dictatorship more opprobrious and terrible than that of Porfirio Díaz; so it has become patently clear that he has undermined the sovereignty of the States, mocking the laws with no 284  Emiliano Zapata and Others

respect for life or interests, as has happened in the State of Morelos and other states, bringing us to the most horrific anarchy registered in contemporary history. For these reasons, we declare Francisco I. Madero incapable of fulfilling the promises of the revolution he instigated, because he has betrayed all of his principles, mocking the will of the people in his rise to power; he is incapable of governing because he has no respect for the law and for the people’s justice, and is a traitor to the Fatherland, humiliating the Mexicans by blood and fire because they desire freedom and an end to pandering to the científicos, hacendados, and caciques who enslave us; today we continue the Revolution begun by [Madero], and will carry on until we defeat the existing dictatorial powers. 2. Francisco I. Madero is disavowed as Chief of the Revolution and as President of the Republic for the reasons expressed above. We shall overthrow this functionary. 3. We recognize as Chief of the Liberating Revolution General Pascual Orozco, second of the caudillo don Francisco I. Madero, and in case he does not accept this delicate post, we shall recognize as chief of the Revolution General Emiliano Zapata. 4. The Revolutionary Junta of the State of Morelos manifests to the Nation, under formal oath, that it adopts the Plan of San Luis Potosí as its own, with the additions that shall be expressed below, for the benefit of the oppressed peoples, and it will make itself the defender of the principles that they defend until victory or death. 5. The Revolutionary Junta of the State of Morelos will make no transactions or political compromises until it has defeated the dictatorial elements of Porfirio Díaz and Francisco I. Madero, for the Nation is tired of false men and traitors who make promises like liberators, and upon attaining power forget those promises and become tyrants. 6. As an additional part of our plan, we make it known: that the lands, forests, and waters that the hacendados, científicos, or caciques have usurped in the shadow of venal justice, will henceforth enter into the possession of the villages or of citizens who have titles corresponding to those properties, and who have been despoiled of them through the bad faith of our oppressors, and they shall maintain that possession with weapon in hand, and the usurpers who believe they have rights to those lands will be heard by special tribunals that will be established upon the triumph of the Revolution. 7. In view of the fact that the immense majority of Mexican villages and citizens own no more land than that which they tread upon, and are unable in any way to better their social condition or dedicate themselves to industry or agriculture, because the lands, forests, and waters are monopolized in only a few hands; for this reason, we expropriate, with prior indemnization, one-third of those monopolies from the powerful proprietors, to the end that the villages and citizens of Mexico shall obtain ejidos, colonias, and fundos lePlan of Ayala  285

gales for the villages, or fields for sowing or laboring, and the Mexicans’ lack of prosperity and welfare shall improve in all and for all. 8. The hacendados, científicos, or caciques who directly or indirectly oppose the present Plan, shall have their properties nationalized and two-­thirds of those properties shall be given as indemnizations of war, pensions to widows and orphans of the victims who are killed in the struggles surrounding the present Plan. 9. In order to execute the procedures respecting the aforementioned properties, the laws of disamortization and nationalization shall be applied, as convenient; for our norm and example shall be the laws put into effect by the immortal Juárez against ecclesiastical properties, which chastised the despots and conservatives who have always wanted to impose upon us the ignominious yoke of oppression and backwardness. 10. The insurgent military chiefs of the Republic who rose up in arms to the voice of don Francisco I. Madero in order to defend the Plan of San Luis Potosí, and who now forcefully oppose the present Plan, will be judged traitors to the cause they defended and to the Fatherland, for presently many of them, in order to placate the tyrants, or for a fistful of coins, or owing to schemes or bribes, are shedding the blood of their brothers who demand the fulfillment of the promises that were made to the Nation by don Francisco I. Madero. 11. The expenses of war will be appropriated according to article XI of the Plan of San Luis Potosí,1 and all of the procedures employed in the Revolution that we undertake will be in accordance with the same instructions that are set out in that Plan. 12. Once our Revolution has triumphed, a junta of the principal revolutionary chiefs of the different States will designate an interim President of the Republic, who will convoke elections for the organization of federal powers. 13. The principal revolutionary chiefs of each State, in council, shall designate the governor of the State, and this high functionary will convoke elections for the proper organization of public powers, with the aim of avoiding forced appointments that bring misfortune to the people, like that of Ambrosio Figueroa in the State of Morelos and others, who force us to the precipice of bloody conflicts sustained by the dictator Madero and the circle of científicos and hacendados who have suggested this to him. 14. If President Madero and the rest of the dictatorial elements of the current and old regime want to avoid the immense misfortunes that afflict the fatherland, and if they possess true sentiments of love for it, they must immediately renounce the posts they occupy, and by so doing they shall in some way stanch the grievous wounds that have opened in the breast of the Fatherland, and if they do not do so, upon their heads shall fall the blood and anathema of our brothers. 286  Emiliano Zapata and Others

15. Mexicans: consider the deviousness and bad faith of a man who is shedding blood in a scandalous manner, because he is incapable of governing; consider that his system of Government is restraining the fatherland and debasing our institutions with the brute force of bayonets; so that the very weapons we used to bring him to Power, we now turn against him for failing to keep his promises to the Mexican people and for having betrayed the Revolution he began; we are not personalists; we are partisans of principles and not of men! Mexican people, support this Plan with weapons in your hands, and bring prosperity and welfare to the Fatherland. Liberty, Justice, and Law. Ayala, State of Morelos, November 25, 1911 General in chief, Emiliano Zapata; signatures. Note 1. That is, if the funds in the treasury are found to be insufficient, the authorities will cover expenses with voluntary or forced loans from Mexican citizens and institutions. Eds.

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The Restoration of the Ejido Luis Cabrera

Emiliano Zapata was not alone in his criticism of Madero’s handling of the agrarian issue. Some criticism came from within the ranks of the government itself. Luis Cabrera (1876–1954) was arguably the most important intellectual of the Mexican revolution. He had a distinguished career as a lawyer, schoolteacher, professor, and journalist in the years prior to the outbreak of the revolution. He backed the candidacy of Francisco I. Madero in 1910 and was elected a federal deputy in 1912. In the Chamber of Deputies, he headed the Bloque Renovador, a group of progressive legislators who pressured Madero to approach social reform more decisively. His most famous pronouncement on the issue came in the speech excerpted below, delivered to Congress in 1912. Cabrera would go on to become a prominent figure in the government of Venustiano Carranza, during a period when violent factionalism was rampant. As Carranza’s treasury secretary, he authored the Law of January 6, 1915, the regime’s key initiative on agrarian reform, which would largely be incorporated into the Constitution of 1917. When Carranza was overthrown and assassinated in 1920, Cabrera’s influence waned drastically and he grew increasingly conservative. Nevertheless, his advocacy of distributing ejidos (common lands) to the villages as a means of satisfying their needs while attacking the inefficient latifundista system would be of enduring significance: the government of Lázaro Cárdenas, which during the 1930s carried out one of the most ambitious agrarian reforms in Latin American history, viewed the distribution of ejidos not as an urgent expedient of war but as an end in itself. Thus, the ejido—­which was ultimately an ambiguous concept of property involving state ownership of the land and communal usufruct by the villages—­became a cornerstone of Mexican agriculture until the neoliberal “reform” of the agrarian reform in 1992. While considering the presentation of this Project to the House of Deputies, I made sure to ascertain [President Madero’s] opinion, in the hope of finding a disposition favorable to these reforms. I must state frankly that I did not find such a disposition on the President’s part. He believes, rightly or wrongly, that the work of reestablishing peace must take precedence over economic reforms that, in his view, will cause further disruptions. I disagree. In my own view, the restoration of peace should be brought about by preven-

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tive and repressive measures, but also by economic reforms that will bring conflicting social groups into a relative state of equilibrium. One of these economic measures that may help to restore peace is the restoration of the ejidos. . . .

Don Francisco I. Madero, in the San Luis Plan, noted that the demand for land was the cause of political unrest and promised to remedy this problem. . . . The need for land was a kind of a phantasm, a vague idea floating in a nebulous state through all minds and spirits. Everyone believed that the solution to the agrarian problem consisted in distributing land; yet no one knew where, or to whom, or what type of land. . . . Meanwhile, the real agrarian problem, [the need to distribute] lands to the hundreds of thousands of pariahs who had none, was gradually becoming more urgent. We needed to give lands not to selected individuals, but to social groups. The fact that the people owned land in previous times made the solution simple and clear: restoration of that land to the people. All dispossessed populations naturally thought that restorations were the solution. [Many] communities . . . recalled that they had but recently lost their lands, and it was undeniable that their lands were taken by illegal means. Is it not natural for people to think that the restoration of their usurped lands will follow the triumph of a revolution that has promised them justice? [And is it not natural to suppose also] that a capitalist, however ambitious, will not willingly give up the lands that he had usurped? And that there will be some means of justice by which the unfortunate people who hunger for the land they once occupied will be satisfied and will return to living the way they lived for more than four hundred years, because their rights were established in the epoch of the Aztecs? The logical but ingenuous system of land restorations was accepted, of course, by the Secretary of the Interior. All the populations seeking the return of their ejidos were invited to come forward and identify themselves and the size of their lands in order to see if restoration would be possible. But what actually happened was inevitable: it was not possible to restore the ejidos, because the greatest injustices in a people’s history cannot be simply undone by a corresponding act of justice—­they must be remedied in some other form. . . . Let me now sketch out the problem as I understand it. At the risk of tiring the reader, I ask for your indulgence with regard to one point. I believe that politics is the most concrete of the sciences, as well as the most concrete of the arts, and extreme caution is needed to avoid rationalizations that rely on analogies with other countries and other periods. Our political system requires a personal and local knowledge of our country and our country’s

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needs, not general principles gathered from the study of other peoples. The antecedents that I draw upon to develop the resolution to this dilemma are not found in the histories of Rome, the English or French Revolutions, Australia, New Zealand, or even Argentina. There is only one country [and history] that can teach us the solutions: New Spain. .  .  . Two factors must be taken into consideration: the land and the people; the land, whose possession we will discuss, and the people, to whom lands should be given. The Spanish occupants of New Spain at the time of the conquest respected the conditions that they found and, under the wise rule of Philip II, the indigenous peoples were not interfered with; later, villages were created through “reductions” and the founding of colonies.1 In the Spaniards’ view, such villages could not survive without their casco, their ejidos, and their propios. The casco [or fundo legal] was the land upon which the town itself was constructed; the ejidos were the communal lands of the village; and the propios were the village’s public lands. We need not concern ourselves with the casco at present. The ejidos and propios, however, have been very important economic entities in our country. Anyone who studies a land title from the colonial period can read on every page the transcendental struggle between villages and haciendas. In the conflicts between the villages and haciendas, the former triumphed thanks to their privileges, their organization, and effective means of cooperation among the villagers, developed over centuries. .  .  . But above all, they triumphed thanks to the enormous power that the villages retained through the possession of public lands [propios], which brought wealth and power, and of ejidos, which helped to preserve their communities. The ejidos assured the people of their subsistence and the propios guaranteed the power of the village governments; the ejidos ensured tranquility of the families gathered around the village church, and the propios brought economic power to the village authorities. The villagers were, in effect, communal landowners rather than individual owners of large landed estates. This was the secret behind the preservation of the villages in the face of the hacienda, in spite of the great political privileges held by Spanish landowners during the colonial period. Later, the true nature of landownership became clear. Laws were passed mandating the breakup of lands held in “dead hands,” 2 and public lands were invariably considered a very dangerous form of landownership which needed to be ended, just as the lands of lay groups and religious institutions had to be dismantled. The communities’ situation with respect to the haciendas was a notoriously privileged one prior to the 1856 law of disentailment. This law was perfectly justified economically, but I do not need to remind you gentlemen that, although the breakup of the public lands may have been necessary, the application of the law to the ejidos was a very serious mistake. The laws were ap290  Luis Cabrera

plied to the ejidos in accordance with the circulars of October and December 1856 which, rather than awarding the lands to individual tenants, stipulated that they be divided up and distributed among the villagers. This led to the disappearance of the ejidos and to the absolute impoverishment of the people. I would not say that all of the land was usurped, although much of it was; I will not say that all of the land was stolen with the connivance of the authorities, although there are thousands of such cases. But the distribution of the ejidos was naturally intended, for economic reasons, to transfer the land to those who could put it to better use. The lands eventually went from the villages into the hands of hacendados. You know the results of this process: in certain parts of the Republic, and principally in the area of the Central Mesa, all of the ejidos became part of the surrounding estates; communities like Jonacatepec, Jojutla . . . ; but, why do I need to mention Morelos? I will simply mention the Federal District: towns like San Juan Ixtayopan, Mixquic, Tlahuac, and Chalco were reduced to their own town boundaries, and in conditions so poor that even the most foolish of the Spanish monarchs or viceroys would not imagine that a people could live this way. . . . This is the situation of 90 percent of the population in the Central Mesa, . . . the cereal zone, where life makes no sense without the ejidos. Some have fought against the disintegration of the ejidos, [and some villages] have even managed to preserve them. Not just one, but many villages have learned to resist the disintegration of their ejidos, using methods easily available to all. After distributing their lands among the villagers, they instinctively deposited their deeds with that person in town who merited the greatest confidence, until this chief . . . had collected all of these titles with the implicit charge of preserving and defending the people’s land through a communal administration. In the state of Mexico, this system was used frequently, and it was perfected to the point where villages became practically cooperatives or corporations which existed with the aim of returning the village to a communal system, but using procedures more in line with modern social organization, according to the rather limited intelligence of the town clerks. This was the means found to defend against the disappearance of communal property; but this strategy was entirely ineffective in the face of the avarice of the surrounding estates toward the distributed land. And so it went, whether through mismanagement by the small landholders or abuses by the authorities; what is certain is that the ejidos have passed almost entirely from the villages to the hacendados. As a consequence, a large number of populations currently are unable to satisfy their most basic needs. In the towns of the state of Morelos, in the southern part of Puebla, and in the state of Mexico, the villagers do not have enough land to feed a goat, or to collect what is ironically called firewood—­a lthough it is really only garbage—­for the pariah’s home; they do not have the means to satisfy the most basic needs The Restoration of the Ejido  291

of rural life, because there is not even a square meter left of the ejidos to provide for the population. Neither economic arguments nor scientific proof are needed to understand that people cannot live when they have no way to perform the agricultural tasks that used to ensure their survival. The simplest means of remedying this situation is restoration of lands to the people. If the people of, say, Ixtlahuaca or Jilotepec can remember that they once had ejidos, what could be simpler or more natural, now that the revolution that once promised justice and lands—­and it did promise these things, no matter what anyone says—­has triumphed, than for the people to request their ejidos once again? Restorations have been attempted, but in the most unjust ways imaginable. The most recent spoliations of the villages have been ineffective; they receive no support from any party, neither from the justice ministry, nor from this Chamber. On the other hand, the distribution of lands seized from small landholders and from villagers who managed to retain some part of their ejidos have received some support of the most unjust sort, for it comes primarily from local authorities who believe that by encouraging the pillaging of those who still have portions of their former ejidos, the situation will be saved. No one seems to see that the true restorations, those we should be attempting, are the ones that aim to recover the lands that have passed into the hands of large landowners, some of whom are completely protected by their influential families. Of course, some of the large landowners are foreigners, and their interests must be respected in order to protect Mexico’s domestic and foreign credit. . . . I hesitate to mention specific individuals, for I do not wish to shame anyone; but I will, with your permission, mention some. I will mention how, under the feudal domination of Iñigo Noriega, the villages of Xochimilco, Chalco, and many other villages have been unable to take back lands that were usurped through the most unjust and violent means; the authorities continue to protect Iñigo Noriega and his enormous estates, which were established by pillaging the people. By contrast, there is the case of [the relatively small landowner] Aureliano Urrutia of Xochimilco, who must deal with the agitation of some individuals and some ridiculous local authorities who provoke the people with claims that his “enormous estate” of three hundred hectares is a threat to the sacred promises proclaimed by the 1910 Revolution. Thousands of cases like Urrutia’s have occurred throughout the Republic, and they have caused discontent to a great number of people. The example suggests a paradox, for it is the small landholders who are the principal victims of the restoration of lands, and they are cast as the enemies of any and all change in the economic condition of the people. Why such absurdity? Because the agrarian issue is the Achilles’ heel of the Revolution. . . . If the rural population had—­as only a few communities [presently] do—­ lakes to fish in and lands to hunt on; or land to plant and harvest, even if un-

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der the vigilance of authorities; if there were woodlands from which people could gather material to make tiles, furniture, and firewood, [thereby solving] their food problems on a basis of freedom; if the rural working population had land where they could plant freely, even a small plot, workers could augment their salaries without relying on the hacienda; they could work on the hacienda during peak seasons for a more equitable wage, and during the rest of the year devote their energies to working for themselves. The ejido would give them these opportunities. Until it is possible to create a system of small-­scale agriculture to replace the current system of large estates, the agrarian problem can be resolved through the granting of ejidos as a means to complement the workers’ ­salaries. . . . The complement to the workers’ wages must come from communal possession of land for subsistence. There are some rural classes which must always serve as day laborers; but we cannot continue to use the political strength of the Government to force these classes to work all year on the haciendas for extremely low wages. The large rural proprietors must resolve to test new agricultural systems which use workers only during the months when agriculture demands it, for the large farms do not absolutely require a permanent workforce. If the haciendas can get by with a maximum of six months and a minimum of four months of labor, and if the working population refuses to be enslaved by the haciendas and their Government allies, the workers either will take up their rifles and join the Zapatista ranks or they will find legal ways to employ their energies, exploiting the fields, plains and hills of the ejidos. . . . When a sick man lies prostrate in his bed or on the table awaiting the surgical knife, he closes his eyes, clenches his jaw and tells the doctor, “Cut,” because his pain resigns him to the greatest heroics; when a man’s whole head is swollen by a fearsome toothache and he goes to the dentist, he is resolved to have all his teeth extracted; but when the pain subsides, he is no longer disposed to make such sacrifices. It is the same in society: when a time of revolution arises, we must apply pressure to resolve problems; we must cut, we must demand sacrifices, because these are times when people are willing to make those sacrifices and changes can be made easily. When the storm clouds pass, however, the old system returns, responses are slower and more tempered, and we are no longer disposed to resolve the transcendental issues that brought about the revolution in the first place. This is why we have not resolved our agrarian problem, the principal dilemma of our country and one that deserves more of our attention. If the solution does not come from here, the Chamber of Deputies, the wound will be reopened.

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Notes 1. During the conquest era, as disease decimated the indigenous population, survivors would be relocated into newly founded villages called “reductions.” See the selection by Zorita in part III. Eds. 2. In the liberal lexicon of the nineteenth century, nonentrepreneurial institutions such as the indigenous villages or the Church were referred to as “dead hands.” See the selection by Luis González in the previous section. Eds.

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Zapatistas in the Palace Martín Luis Guzmán

The government of Francisco I. Madero was overthrown in February 1913, and soon thereafter both Madero and his vice president, José María Pino Suárez, were killed. The regime that took over, headed by federalist General Victoriano Huerta, was authoritarian and reactionary and had very little popular support. Factions arose in various parts of the country to oppose the Huerta dictatorship; the most important was led by the governor of Coahuila, Venustiano Carranza, who was tenuously recognized by the insurgent armies as “First Chief.” The revolution quickly entered a tremendously violent phase, one that did not end with Huerta’s ouster in July 1914. In October 1914 the several revolutionary factions met in the city of Aguascalientes to participate in the Sovereign Revolutionary Convention, whose goal was to establish a new government for all of Mexico. Sharp disagreements and clashes among leaders quickly led to a violent rupture between Conventionists (the populist forces of Zapata and Pancho Villa) on one side, and Constitutionalists (led by the patrician Carranza) on the other. The president of the Conventionist faction was Eulalio Gutiérrez, though the real power was held by Pancho Villa in the North and Emiliano Zapata in the South. The two movements were remarkably different in character, and their prospects for a successful alliance were remote. Still, they were able to occupy Mexico City briefly from late November 1914 until late January 1915. The following excerpt presents a scene from that occupation. Martín Luis Guzmán (1887–1976) was the son of a federal army colonel from the northern state of Chihuahua. Eschewing his father’s profession, he became one of Mexico’s greatest literary figures. When the revolution broke out in 1910, the young Guzmán had just begun a career as a journalist. During the fight against Huerta he served as emissary from Venustiano Carranza to Pancho Villa, an experience that provided the material for his most famous books, The Eagle and the Serpent (1928) and Memoirs of Pancho Villa (1951), both works of fiction based on Guzmán’s firsthand observations. In the vignette that follows, he provides a vivid portrait of the Zapatista leadership and their ambivalence toward political power. At the same time, he graphically evokes the yawning cultural chasm that separated Mexico’s humble peasant revolutionaries from urbane, middle-­class intellectuals like himself.

295

Provisional President Eulalio Gutiérrez (center left) and General Eufemio Zapata (center right) after taking possession of the National Palace, December 4, 1914. Eulalio Gutiérrez (who was not a Zapatista) is wearing a three-­piece suit, in contrast to the rough cowboy attire of Eufemio Zapata, highlighting the tension between rural and urban groups that is an important theme of the Guzmán text. Photograph by Agustín Casasola, from Historia Gráfica de la Revolución Mexicana 1900–1970, vol. 1, by Gustavo Casasola Zapata (Mexico City: Editorial Trillas, 1992), 167.

Eulalio Gutiérrez wanted to visit the National Palace before installing his government. I went there with him that same afternoon, along with [his minister of war] José Isabel Robles. Eufemio Zapata [the elder brother of rebel leader Emiliano Zapata], who had custody of the building, came out to welcome us at the Palace’s central door and to grant us the honors of the house. Judging from his comportment, Eufemio seemed quite sincere in his momentary role of inviting the new president into his own government mansion and demonstrating the splendors of his future salons and offices. As we were getting out of the car he reached out his hand, speaking words that were unpolished but friendly. While the greetings were going on, I looked around me. The car had stopped just inside the door, under one of the arcades of the great patio. Far off, the solid white of the archway and the shadows of the openings met at an angle. Nearby a group of Zapatistas watched us from the guard station while others peered out from between the pillars. What was their attitude? Humble? Suspicious? Their aspect awoke in me a strange feeling of curiosity, due largely to the overall scene of which they formed a part. Because that enormous palace, which in the past had always seemed the same to me, now stood nearly empty but for these bands of half-­naked rebels. The effect was of something incomprehensible. 296  Martín Luis Guzmán

We did not climb the monumental staircase, but instead used the stairs of honor. Eufemio walked behind us like a porter who is showing off a house to rent. He wore pants with wide flanges on the outer seams, a denim shirt knotted under the belly, and an immensely wide hat. As we climbed those steps, it occurred to me that he might symbolize the historic days we were living in: he symbolized them through the contrast between his figure—­not humble but coarse—­and the refinement and culture that the stairway represented. Palace footmen, stagecoach drivers, employees, ambassadors—­a ll had climbed those stairs in the past without clashing with them. They had maintained the dignity inherent in their jobs and held to their place within the hierarchy of dignitaries. Eufemio climbed the stairs like a stable boy who believes himself suddenly catapulted into the presidency. One could see, in the way his shoes touched the carpet, the incompatibility between carpet and shoe; in the way his hand moved along the railing, the incompatibility between railing and hand. His feet, with their every movement, seemed surprised they weren’t stumbling over craggy ground; his hands reached out as if expecting to feel tree bark or the rough edge of a stone. It was clear that for him, this environment was lacking everything that should have been there, that it was at best sufficient. But then I was assailed by a tremendous doubt. What about us? What impression were we making on the small group that assembled behind Eufemio? Eulalio and Robles with their Texas hats, unshaven faces, and the unmistakable air of uncultivated men; and me, with the eternal air of those civilians who, in times of violence, meddle in Mexican politics: hangers-­on, pretentious intellectual advisors to adventurous caudillos at best, or to criminals masquerading as politicians at worst. Eufemio led us tirelessly, one by one, through the salons and chambers of the Presidency. Our footsteps echoed on the brightly waxed floor wherein our reflections were broken by the varying tones of the marquetry or were muffled by the fleece of the carpets. Behind us we could hear the tla-­tla of the sandals worn by the two Zapatistas who followed us at a distance, starting and then fading in the silence of the deserted rooms like a sweet and humble rumor. The tla-­tla would cease for long periods as the two Zapatistas stopped to look at some painting or piece of furniture. I turned to look at them. From a distance they seemed like inlays in the vast perspective of the rooms, a strangely distant and quiet double figure. They observed everything as one, unspeaking, their heads bared, their hair thick and matted, humbly clutching their straw hats with both hands. Their concentration—­tender, embarrassed, almost religious—­represented truth of a kind. But what did we represent? Did we represent something fundamental, something sincere, something profound, Eufemio, Eulalio, Robles, and me? We discussed it all, smiling, keeping our hats on. On every topic, Eufemio offered his opinions—­ often elemental and Zapatistas in the Palace  297

primitive—­w ithout reservation. His observations suggested that he had an optimistic and ingenuous notion about high official functions. “Here,” he told us, “is where the government people talk.” “Here is where the government people dance.” “Here is where the government people dine.” It was abundantly clear that we, as far as he was concerned, had never known what it was like to walk among tapestries, nor did we have the slightest idea of what use a sofa, console, or dais might be put to; and so he enlightened us. And he said everything in a tone of such simplicity that it produced genuine tenderness in me. He stood in front of the presidential chair and triumphantly, almost ecstatically exclaimed: “This is the chair!” And then, in an eruption of enviable candor, he added: “Since I’ve been here, I’ve come to see this chair every day, so as to accustom myself to it. Because, get this: I always used to think the presidential chair was a saddle.” Eufemio laughed at his own simplicity, and we laughed along with him. But Eulalio, who had long been itching to make a joke at the Zapatista general’s expense, turned to him and, lightly placing a hand on his shoulder, threw his dart in a mellifluous and soothing voice. “Not for nothing, my friend, are you such a fine horseman. You, and others like you, shall surely become presidents on the day that chairs like this one are put onto the backs of horses.” As if by magic, Eufemio stopped laughing. He grew guarded and solemn. He felt Eulalio’s barb—­so cruel and, perhaps, so opportune—­i n his soul. “Very well,” he said moments later, “since there’s nothing more worth seeing here . . . let’s go downstairs to the coach houses and stables. We will visit them a while and then I’ll take you to the place where I’m staying with my companions.” We went to see the coach houses and stables, although more for his satisfaction than ours. About the collars, reins, bits, and harnesses—­w ith their smell of crisp, oiled leather—­he displayed an incredible sum of precise knowledge. He seemed to know no less about breeding, training, and showing horses. He spoke so enthusiastically that he forgot about the chair incident. Then he led us to the part of the palace where he and his men were staying. Eufemio—­perhaps proving his sincerity—­had found lodging to his liking in the meanest and most remote back quarters of the Palace. He undoubtedly realized the extreme rudeness of his refuge, for he tried to ward off criticism by explaining the nature of his dwelling. “I’m over there,” he told us, “because I’ve always been poor, and I could never live in the fancier rooms.” The place was truly abominable. As we entered, I felt I was drowning. The room, of middling dimensions, had but a single door and no window. Fifty, eighty, a hundred Zapatista chieftains and officers were there when we entered: they were crowded in, most standing, body against body or in groups hugging one another. Some were sitting on tables. Others lay on the ground along the walls or in corners. Many held bottles or glasses. All breathed the 298  Martín Luis Guzmán

opaque and pestilent air, a mixture of spirits and the smoke of a thousand cigars. All were more or less drunk. A soldier stood by the door, making sure it stayed closed so that neither gazes nor light could enter. Two tiny electric lamps barely shone in that atmosphere of confining, humid, suffocating fog. Our presence was not noticed at first. Later, as Eufemio walked among the groups, speaking in a low voice, we were observed without suspicion and even some signs of a cordial reception. But those signs were rare, almost imperceptible. Without a doubt, we had just fallen into a world that was different from our own, so different that merely entering was disconcerting to us. And the discomfort remained despite everyone’s wishes to the contrary. Almost everyone avoided meeting our gaze. They gave us sideways glances, lowering their eyes; from time to time they would turn their backs to raise a bottle or to empty a glass. Eufemio and the men closest to him invited us to drink. “Yes, some drinks!” cried Eufemio. There was a frightening flurry of hands that deposited some five or six filthy glasses on a corner of the table. Eufemio lined them up and poured tequila over the sediment they contained. As he drank, Eufemio changed. He first grew happy, then affable; later he turned something between pensive and somber. By the fifth or sixth drink he loudly recalled the presidential chair and Eulalio’s joke. He told his people: “Our friend here believes that Emiliano and I, and others like us, will be presidents on the day they saddle horses with presidential chairs like the one upstairs.” There was a profound silence, broken only by Eulalio’s mocking giggle. Then began a muttering, but it had a new, vague, restless and disturbing nuance. As always, Eufemio acted as if nothing had happened. He poured more tequila. Once again the glasses were lined up and once again we set to drinking the sticky slime left by others. . . . It was at this moment that Robles looked at me fixedly and then, very subtly, made signals with his eyes. I understood his meaning, guzzled my drink, and bid farewell to Eufemio. An hour later, upon returning to the Palace followed by Robles’s guard, I saw Eulalio and Robles calmly leaving by the same door we had entered earlier in the afternoon. “Thank you,” Eulalio said when he saw me. “Fortunately I no longer need the guard: They were all in such a hurry to get drunk that they didn’t have time to fight with us. In any case, our caution was not for nothing. . . . What scares me is that you and Robles were able to understand each other without speaking.”

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Mexico Has Been Turned into a Hell William O. Jenkins

One of the first major battles of the ugly, factionalized war that broke out after the Convention of 1914 was fought in the city of Puebla, some sixty miles southeast of Mexico City. The city was taken easily by the Zapatista forces in December 1914 when the Constitutionalists abandoned it. The Constitutionalists, intent on retaking the city, invaded in force in early January 1915. U.S. Consul William O. Jenkins here paints a vivid picture of the ferocity which would characterize this phase of the revolution, known to historians as the “war of the factions.” His jaundiced view of Mexicans in general, and of revolutionaries in particular, were typical of many foreign observers, who were quick to find the remedy for Mexico’s woes in foreign intervention and who appeared to believe that Mexicans would welcome such a violation of their sovereignty. William O. Jenkins (1878–1963) was a prominent and controversial figure in Mexico’s twentieth-­century history. A native of Shelbyville, Tennessee, in 1901 he moved to Mexico, where he soon proved himself a shrewd—­and reportedly ruthless—­ businessman. He built up a string of textile and stocking factories in various parts of the country and was named U.S. consul for the Puebla region. While he was clearly unhinged by the events he describes below, Jenkins did not abandon his interests in Mexico; rather, he found ways to profit from the chaos and violence of the revolution, largely by loaning money to desperate landowners and later foreclosing on them. By the end of the war, he had become the dominant figure in the Mexican sugar industry. His close ties to influential political figures—­notably, the notorious General Maximino Avila Camacho, the political boss of Puebla during the 1930s—­helped him to acquire many other interests, ranging from banking to a nearly complete monopoly on Mexico’s movie theaters. In 1960, Time magazine declared him to be the richest man in Mexico. Perhaps Jenkins’s greatest notoriety came in 1919, when he was kidnapped and held for ransom by Mexican rebels. When the kidnappers released him, he was immediately arrested by the government and charged (probably falsely) with engineering his own kidnapping. The episode caused a brief flare-­up in tensions between Mexico and the United States. Jenkins is mostly remembered in Mexico today for his vast fortune and for the Mary Street Jenkins Foundation, founded in the 1950s in honor of his late wife, which continues to fund hospitals, universities, and other philanthropic causes. 300

Puebla, Mexico. January the 7th. 1915. Hon. Arnold Shanklin, American Consul General, Temporarily in Veracruz

Sir: . . . The general attack was begun early on the 5th, and on the opposite side of town from my house. I saw many large bodies of Zapatistas evacuating the city without a fight . . . but it is said that many of the Zapatistas got surrounded in the city and had to fight their way out. At any rate, there was some severe fighting in the streets of the city, beginning as I have said on the opposite side of the city from my house, and gradually getting nearer, as the Zapatistas fought their way out on this side. In front of the Consulate, there was an extremely prolonged battle, lasting for more than an hour, for usually the fighting was done on the run, and no stand was made, but evidently some one got cornered in front of the Consulate, for the firing was constant for at least an hour. When it finally terminated here, it was practically over throughout the whole city, or at least I heard very few shots after that. The factory was working at the time, and of course was full of the female operators whom I employ in my knitting mill, about three hundred at the time. I was careful to get them all under cover, and no one was hurt. Of course the front of the building was struck many times, and the window glass broken up, but that is only natural considering the number of shots fired, and the poor marksmanship of these soldiers. . . . After the firing ceased and allowing a sufficient time to elapse to not be in danger, I went out and there were twenty-­seven dead men in front of the house and one wounded. I immediately sent the wounded man to the hospital, and upon examination of the dead, found that many of them had been evidently shot after being hurt and unable to move, for their heads were blown open in many cases, sometimes stuck with knives, and everything showing that the wounded had been unmercifully finished up, after being helpless. Also I noticed many wounds made with the expansive bullets and picked up pieces of these bullets as well. In the afternoon, when the patrols of the Carrancistas were going about over the city, examining the dead etc., I was shocked to be told that it was reported that the shots which had killed these men had been fired from my house. I immediately denied such a report, and paid no further attention to it, but about five o’clock in the afternoon, I was sitting in my office, and heard a scandal at the door, and went there only to find a crowd of drunken soldiers, abusing the doorkeeper, striking him, and firing at him twice, which he fortunately escaped, and they at once began with their abuse at me, saying that I had killed their comrades etc. etc., threatening to shoot me at once, and using all manner of abuses and indignities. I pretended to summon the authorities, but was immediately put under arrest, and threatened with instant death, Mexico Has Been Turned into a Hell  301

and together with my brother-­in-­law, and the doorkeeper we were carried off through the street between files of these drunken dogs, to their cuartel [military headquarters]. We were there placed in an open lot with the horses and soldiers and threatened with immediate execution if we attempted to run away. I assure you that I had no thought of attempting it, and only prayed that we would be spared the shooting if we made no attempt to run away. Before leaving the house, I explained to them that this building was the American Consulate and that I was the Consul, but was informed that it made no difference to them what I was, nor what the house was, as I had to pay for the death of the men in front of my house. I explained to them that I could prove by three hundred witnesses of their own people that no shots had been fired from my house, that I took no part in the matter, etc. etc., but it was like arguing a matter before a herd of swine, as they would listen to nothing, and amid insults and abuses we were carried to the cuartel. After arriving there, I finally managed to get a talk with the captain, for it must be noted that the men who had arrested us were privates, and a sergeant or so, all equally abusive. I explained to the Captain who I was, and why I was arrested, and finally got him to return to the house with me, so that I could show him why their accusation was completely false. I was not released however, but carried back to the lot and confined there for about three hours, until a Coronel came, who immediately put us at liberty, and said that if our presence was necessary the next day, he would advise me. He assured me that I would not be molested any further and I returned home. . . . Early the next morning (Yesterday, Jan. the 6th) I was awakened by a loud knocking at the door, and upon going toward the door, encountered about thirty soldiers, headed by another crazy sergeant, and was informed that I was under arrest, and to accompany them at once. I was not even allowed to dress properly, but was made to accompany them throughout all the house searching even the rooms where my wife and daughters were in bed, and upon venturing to inquire by whose orders this was being done, was significantly informed that their rifles were their orders, and not to question them. My brother-­i n-­law was not taken at once, though his room was searched, and I was again hurried down through the streets with six employees who were around the front door, to another place of confinement. These were different soldiers from the afternoon previous, but even more abusive than the other if possible. Upon arriving at their cuartel, which was full of the rest of their company, I was met with the vilest invective, curses known only to Mexicans, abuses and even blows, and it was with difficulty that we were conducted to the cell where we were to be confined. Upon seeing that my brother-­in-­law was not with me, he was immediately sent for, but in the meanwhile it was decided that I should be immediately shot for aiding the Zapatistas the previous day. It was impossible to explain that I was innocent, and had nothing to do with the battle in any way, and I was hastened from the room where, 302  William O. Jenkins

confined to the patio, and in spite of my protestations of innocence, and even pleading, I was made to stand against a stone pillar, and the whole crowd of insane fiends were preparing to shoot me. I asked permission to write a note of farewell to my wife, but was met by increased insults, and had given up all hope on earth of being saved when a captain, evidently belonging to another regiment, passed by, and asked the sergeant or cabo [corporal] who was in charge, what they were doing and why they were doing it, and upon being told, I went to him and told him who I was, that I was absolutely innocent of any charge, but was being murdered like a dog without even listening to hundreds of witnesses who would swear to my absolute innocence. Upon asking the sergeant why they were shooting me and on whose orders, it developed that they had no order at all, except a general order to shoot snipers from the General, but they had taken it on themselves to judge me guilty without any especial order, or trial whatever. Seeing in this captain at least a ray of hope, I besought him to procure a stay of execution, or rather murder I should call it, until the General’s attention was called to it, and he in his turn explained to the Sergeant that it would be a dangerous matter to thus shoot the American Consul without a special order to do so. In spite of the protestations of all the soldiers, and their efforts to prevent it, this captain personally conducted me back to the cell, and a little later, I was conducted to another building, and confined there with other prisoners. This was very early in the morning, and until about 12:30. I was released through the efforts of the British Consul, Mr. W. S. Hardaker, who had upon hearing from my wife what had happened hastened to Gen. F[rancisco] Coss and Gen. Alvaro Obregon, who were commanding the Carrancista troops, and explained to them my situation and peril. Immediately on being informed, Gen. Obregon, who is in charge of the entire military force here, sent for me, and released all the men who were imprisoned with me, as well as my brother-­i n-­law who had also been imprisoned in another place, and gave me offers of all protection and guarantees, assuring me of his sincere regret of the occurrence, and offering to punish those who were guilty of such an act. He was extremely kind about it, which I appreciated very much, but I was unable to forget that but for a miracle I would have been shot down in cold blood by his irresponsable [sic] men, even though he himself had nothing but kind intentions to give protection to all. . . . These [Mexican soldiers] understand nothing. They are animals without hearts, conscience or intelligence. Their Generals may be honest men, I don’t know, but the soldiers know no obedience, and are completely and utterly irresponsible, without having any other aim in war than robbery and destruction. Liberty, for which they claim to be fighting, is to them, license to rob and destroy. They know no ideals, and are incapable of comprehension. I have known this all along, but never have I so completely appreciated it as now, when I have passed through this terrible ordeal. It has made an old man of me in a day. I have lost all interest in everything and only think of getting Mexico Has Been Turned into a Hell  303

away from this God-­forsaken country, to where a man can sleep in peace. I cannot rest here but am looking all night into a thousand rifles pointed at me by as many howling devils, and undergoing the tortures of all doomed men. If I had committed a crime, and was being executed for it, I believe that I could face the firing squad with some degree of equanimity, knowing that I was only receiving my just due, or if I had to die for my country, I could do it in the knowledge that I was complying with my duty, but to be subject to assassination, to murder, such as this, and knowing that as long as this state of affairs lasts, we will all continually be subject to the same thing, [is] why, Mr. Shanklin, it has taken the very life out of me. Every sound startles me, because I have no assurance but that at any time a crowd of these devils will come and shoot me in my own room in spite of all the orders of the Generals in Mexico. There is no discipline among them. They know no order. Every common private is a law unto himself. Not only with the Carrancistas, but the Zapatistas are even worse. As you know I have been in Mexico a long time, about fifteen years. I have worked hard and have built up a great business, completely covering the whole Republic in my line, and have made a fortune, but I am anxious to abandon it all, and get out where I can breathe free once more. . . . Mexico has been turned into a Hell, and gets worse every day, for little by little its resources are being destroyed, its riches being wasted in a senseless war, and the time is very near when there will be famine and thousands will die for lack of food. Many calculate that this will come in six months. Certainly in another year. Knowing these people as I do, I don’t want to face the consequences that a famine is sure to bring, for then it will be like turning wild animals together, and no life will be respected for a moment longer than the opportunity comes to destroy it. The country is completely demoralized, and the soldiers have long since lost all conception of personal privilege or property rights, and accept as authority only some one whom they fear. . . . . . . You have always been extremely discreet in your conversations with me as regards any criticism about any action or policy of our country as regards Mexico, and I may be overstepping the bounds of Consular propriety to ask you, if you can understand why our Government continues to allow munitions of war to be given into the hands of these irresponsible people to be used not only in murdering each other without cause or reason, but in destroying the lives of foreigners as well, and even in shooting the own [sic] representatives of our country, for it is no fault of the ammunition or the men who had it, that I was not murdered yesterday. It is a cold blooded traffic in men’s lives, and nothing more, and I can not possible [sic] understand how it can be countenanced by our Government. If the war was for a cause, or a reason, if there was any solution in sight, if it was for men’s liberty, or a heritage for their children, we would all of us, who know Mexico so thoroughly, say that was for the best, but it has degener304  William O. Jenkins

ated now into a war of pillage and destruction and the greatest evils which it started out to cure and the reforms it was to establish have been lost sight of in the maze of changes that have taken place, and the longer it is allowed to go on, the worse it will become. I was for years violently opposed to any Intervention on the part of our Government in Mexican affairs, because I thought that the Mexicans should be allowed to settle their internal affairs in their own way, but the matter has now reached such a stage, that I am very much afraid there is no other solution. The element of Mexican citizenship which could be counted on to bring about the needed reforms in the proper way have [sic] long since been eliminated from the scene of action, and we have now the country governed by illiterate men, without the least capacity for helping the country in this dire need, but only capable of ruling a sufficient number of men to keep them in the fight. When I was in Mexico on Dec. the 23rd, I had an interview with President Eulalio Gutierrez, and found him a miner who worked for me in 1905 and 1906 in the state of Zacatecas, a man utterly incapable of even comprehending the position which he fills, much less understanding the thousand and one difficult problems that he has to face. It is useless to tell you, for you already know it, that he is a mere figurehead, and will serve no other purpose than to probably cause trouble when he is separated from his position. He is a good miner to earn two or three pesos per day, or to even manage a bunch of twenty or fifty peons, as he did when I knew him, but ridiculously incapable of his present exalted position. I am therefore coming to the opinion that it will be a positive necessity for Mexico to have some assistance in straightening out this tangle, for otherwise it will gradually assume a state of anarchy that will ultimately become unbearable.

Mexico Has Been Turned into a Hell  305

Pancho Villa John Reed

In the northern part of Mexico, a style of revolution arose that contrasted sharply with that of the settled, religious, generally conservative peasants of Morelos. Here, peasants, cowhands, miners, and petty merchants took up arms with abandon: in the unforgettable portrait painted by Mariano Azuela, the first important novelist of the Mexican revolution, the northern rebels fought “as if in that unrestrained running they were trying to take possession of the whole land” 1 and to redress the humiliations of their former lives. No one better exemplifies this spirit than the legendary northern leader, Francisco “Pancho” Villa, who is portrayed here by the American journalist John Reed (1887–1920). Reed’s work was tremendously popular and influential in molding world opinion regarding the Mexican revolution, and Villa in particular (after reading his work, Woodrow Wilson expressed great admiration for Villa). John Reed was a left-­w ing writer who made the most of his short life by chronicling the American labor movement, the Mexican revolution, and, most famously, the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. Only twenty-­six years old in 1913, Reed approached his subject with a rare boldness, traveling alone and unprotected through revolutionary Mexico, living and fighting with the ordinary soldiers, and cultivating a relationship of mutual respect with Villa. His unrestrained admiration for the revolutionary seems somewhat naive in retrospect, though he clearly represented the romantic tendencies of his generation in viewing Villa as a noble savage, a primitive socialist, capable of reinventing Mexico while igniting hopes for change in other climes. While readers should be cautioned against Reed’s tendency to over-­romanticize his subject, it is worth noting that later writers—­most notably the historian Friedrich Katz, whose monumental biography of Villa was published in 1998—­bear out many of Reed’s main points.

The Rise of a Bandit Villa was an outlaw for twenty-­two years. When he was only a boy of sixteen, delivering milk in the streets of Chihuahua, he killed a government official and had to take to the mountains. The story is that the official had violated his sister, but it seems probable that Villa killed him on account of 306

his insufferable insolence. That in itself would not have outlawed him long in Mexico, where human life is cheap; but once a refugee he committed the unpardonable crime of stealing cattle from the rich hacendados. And from that time to the outbreak of the Madero revolution the Mexican government had a price on his head. Villa was the son of ignorant peons. He had never been to school. He hadn’t the slightest conception of the complexity of civilization, and when he finally came back to it, a mature man of extraordinary native shrewdness, he encountered the twentieth century with the naïve simplicity of a savage. It is almost impossible to procure accurate information about his career as a bandit. There are accounts of outrages he committed in old files of local newspapers and government reports, but those sources are prejudiced, and his name became so prominent as a bandit that every train robbery and holdup and murder in northern Mexico was attributed to Villa. But an immense body of popular legend grew up among the peons around his name. There are many traditional songs and ballads celebrating his exploits—­you can hear the shepherds singing them around their fires in the mountains at night, repeating verses handed down by their fathers or composing others extemporaneously. For instance, they tell the story of how Villa, fired by the story of the misery of the peons on the Hacienda of Los Alamos, gathered a small army and descended upon the Big House, which he looted, and distributed the spoils among the poor people. He drove off thousands of cattle from the Terrazzas [sic] range and ran them across the border.2 He would suddenly descend upon a prosperous mine and seize the bullion. When he needed corn he captured a granary belonging to some rich man. He recruited almost openly in the villages far removed from the well-­traveled roads and railways, organizing the outlaws of the mountains. Many of the present rebel soldiers used to belong to his band and several of the Constitutionalist generals, like Urbina. . . . His reckless and romantic bravery is the subject of countless poems. They tell, for example, how one of his band named Reza was captured by the rurales and bribed to betray Villa. Villa heard of it and sent word into the city of Chihuahua that he was coming for Reza. In broad daylight he entered the city on horseback, took ice cream on the Plaza—­the ballad is very explicit on this point—­a nd rode up and down the streets until he found Reza strolling with his sweetheart in the Sunday crowd on the Paseo Bolivar, where he shot him and escaped. In time of famine he fed whole districts, and took care of entire villages evicted by the soldiers under Porfirio Diaz’s outrageous land law. Everywhere he was known as The Friend of the Poor. He was the Mexican Robin Hood. In all these years he learned to trust nobody. Often in his secret journeys across the country with one faithful companion he camped in some desolate spot and dismissed his guide; then, leaving a fire burning, he rode all night Pancho Villa  307

Pancho Villa. This photograph accommodates Reed’s view that Villa was a salt-­of-­t he-­ earth fighter who developed extraordinarily close and enduring relations with the men in his ranks. Photograph by Casasola, 1920, Fototeca Nacional del inah , Colección Archivo Casasola, 6285.

to get away from the faithful companion. That is how Villa learned the art of war, and in the field today, when the army comes into camp at night, Villa flings the bridle of his horse to an orderly, takes a serape over his shoulder, and sets out for the hills alone. He never seems to sleep. In the dead of night he will appear somewhere along the line of outposts to see if the sentries are on the job; and in the morning he returns from a totally different direction. No one, not even the most trusted officer of his staff, knows the last of his plans until he is ready for action. . . .

A Peon in Politics Villa proclaimed himself military governor of the State of Chihuahua, and began the extraordinary experiment—­extraordinary because he knew nothing about it—­of creating a government for 300,000 people out of his head. It has often been said that Villa succeeded because he had educated advisers. As a matter of fact, he was almost alone. What advisers he had spent 308  John Reed

most of their time answering his eager questions and doing what he told them. I used sometimes to go to the Governor’s palace early in the morning and wait for him in the Governor’s chamber. About eight o’clock Sylvestre Terrazzas, the Secretary of State, Sebastian Vargas, the State Treasurer, and Manuel Chao, then Interventor, would arrive, very bustling and busy, with huge piles of reports, suggestions, and decrees which they had drawn up. Villa himself came in about eight-­thirty, threw himself into a chair, and made them read out loud to him. Every minute he would interject a remark, correction or suggestion. Occasionally he waved his finger back and forward and said: “No sirve” [“This won’t do”]. When they were all through he began rapidly and without a halt to outline the policy of the State of Chihuahua, legislative, financial, judicial, and even educational. When he came to a place that bothered him, he said: “How do they do that?” And then, after it was carefully explained to him: “Why?” Most of the acts and usages of government seemed to him extraordinarily unnecessary and snarled up. For example, his advisers proposed to finance the Revolution by issuing State bonds bearing 30 or 40 percent interest. He said, “I can understand why the State should pay something to people for the rent of their money, but how is it just to pay the whole sum back to them three or four times over?” He couldn’t see why rich men should be granted huge tracts of land and poor men should not. The whole complex structure of civilization was new to him. You had to be a philosopher to explain anything to Villa; and his advisers were only practical men. . . . No sooner had he taken over the government of Chihuahua than he put his army to work running the electric light plant, the street railways, the telephone, the water works, and the Terrazzas flour mill. He delegated soldiers to administer the great haciendas which he had confiscated. He manned the slaughterhouse with soldiers, and sold Terrazzas’s beef to the people for the government. A thousand of them he put in the streets of the city as civil police, prohibiting on pain of death stealing, or the sale of liquor to the army. A soldier who got drunk was shot. He even tried to run the brewery with soldiers, but failed because he couldn’t find an expert maltster. “The only thing to do with soldiers in time of peace,” said Villa, “is to put them to work. An idle soldier is always thinking of war.” In the matter of the political enemies of the Revolution he was just as simple, just as effective. Two hours after he entered the Governor’s palace the foreign consuls came in a body to ask his protection for 200 Federal soldiers who had been left as a police force at the request of the foreigners. Before answering them, Villa said suddenly: “Which is the Spanish consul?” Scobell, the British vice-­consul, said: “I represent the Spaniards.” “All right!” snapped Villa. “Tell them to begin to pack. Any Spaniard caught within the boundaries of this State after five days will be escorted to the nearest wall by a firing squad.” Pancho Villa  309

The consuls gave a gasp of horror. Scobell began a violent protest, but Villa cut him short. “This is not a sudden determination on my part,” he said; “I have been thinking about this since 1910. The Spaniards must go.” Letcher, the American consul, said: “General, I don’t question your motives, but I think you are making a grave political mistake in expelling the Spaniards. The government at Washington will hesitate a long time before becoming friendly to a party which makes use of such barbarous measures.” “Señor Consul,” answered Villa, “we Mexicans have had three hundred years of the Spaniards. They have not changed in character since the Conquistadores. They disrupted the Indian empire and enslaved the people. We did not ask them to mingle their blood with ours. Twice we drove them out of Mexico and allowed them to return with the same rights as Mexicans, and they used these rights to steal away our land, to make the people slaves, and to take up arms against the cause of liberty. They supported Porfirio Diaz. They were perniciously active in politics. It was the Spaniards who framed the plot that put Huerta in the palace. When Madero was murdered the Spaniards in every State in the Republic held banquets of rejoicing. They thrust on us the greatest superstition the world has ever known—­the Catholic Church. They ought to be killed for that alone. I consider we are being very generous with them.” Scobell insisted vehemently that five days was too short a time, that he couldn’t possibly reach all the Spaniards in the State by that time; so Villa extended the time to ten days. The rich Mexicans who had oppressed the people and opposed the Revolution, he expelled promptly from the State and confiscated their vast holdings. By a simple stroke of the pen the 17,000,000 acres and innumerable business enterprises of the Terrazzas family became the property of the Constitutionalist government, as well as the great lands of the Creel family and the magnificent palaces which were their town houses. Remembering, however, how the Terrazzas exiles had once financed the Orozco Revolution, he imprisoned Don Luis Terrazzas Jr. as a hostage in his own house in Chihuahua. Some particularly obnoxious political enemies were promptly executed in the penitentiary. The Revolution possesses a black book in which are set down the names, offenses, and property of those who have oppressed and robbed the people. The Germans, who had been particularly active politically, the Englishmen and Americans, he does not yet dare to molest. Their pages in the black book will be opened when the Constitutionalist government is established in Mexico City; and there, too, he will settle the account of the Mexican people with the Catholic Church. . . .

310  John Reed

The Human Side Villa has two wives, one a patient, simple woman who was with him during all his years of outlawry, who lives in El Paso, and the other a cat-­l ike, slender young girl, who is the mistress of his house in Chihuahua. He is perfectly open about it, though lately the educated, conventional Mexicans who have been gathering about him in ever-­increasing numbers have tried to hush up the fact. Among the peons it is not only not unusual but customary to have more than one mate. One hears a great many stories of Villa’s violating women. I asked him if that were true. He pulled his mustache and stared at me for a minute with an inscrutable expression. “I never take the trouble to deny such stories,” he said. “They say I am a bandit, too. Well, you know my history. But tell me; have you ever met a husband, father, or brother of any woman that I have violated?” He paused: “Or even a witness?” It is fascinating to watch him discover new ideas. Remember that he is absolutely ignorant of the troubles and confusions and readjustments of modern civilization. “Socialism,” he said once, when I wanted to know what he thought of it: “Socialism—­is it a thing? I only see it in books, and I do not read much.” Once I asked him if women would vote in the new Republic. He was sprawled out on his bed, with his coat unbuttoned. “Why, I don’t think so,” he said, startled, suddenly sitting up. “What do you mean—vote? Do you mean elect a government and make laws?” I said I did and that women already were doing it in the United States. “Well,” he said, scratching his head, “if they do it up there I don’t see that they shouldn’t do it down here.” The idea seemed to amuse him enormously. He rolled it over and over in his mind, looking at me and away again. “It may be as you say,” he said, “but I have never thought about it. Women seem to me to be things to protect, to love. They have no sternness of mind. They can’t consider anything for its right or wrong. They are full of pity and softness. Why,” he said, “a woman would not give an order to execute a traitor.” “I am not so sure of that, mi General,” I said. “Women can be crueler and harder than men.” He stared at me, pulling his mustache. And then he began to grin. He looked slowly to where his wife was setting the table for lunch. “Oiga,” he said, “come here. Listen. Last night I caught three traitors crossing the river to blow up the railroad. What shall I do with them? Shall I shoot them or not?” Embarrassed, she seized his hand and kissed it. “Oh, I don’t know anything about that,” she said. “You know best.” “No,” said Villa. “I leave it entirely to you. Those men were going to try to cut our communications between Juarez and Chihuahua. They were traitors—­Federals. What shall I do? Shall I shoot them or not?” Pancho Villa  311

“Oh, well, shoot them,” said Mrs. Villa. Villa chuckled delightedly. “There is something in what you say,” he remarked, and for days afterward went around asking the cook and the chambermaids whom they would like to have for President of Mexico. . . . It seems incredible to those who don’t know him, that this remarkable figure, who has risen from obscurity to the most prominent position in Mexico in three years, should not covet the Presidency of the Republic. But that is in entire accordance with the simplicity of his character. When asked about it he answered as always with perfect directness, just in the way that you put it to him. He didn’t quibble over whether he could or could not be President of Mexico. He said: “I am a fighter, not a statesman. I am not educated enough to be President. I only learned to read and write two years ago. How could I, who never went to school, hope to be able to talk with the foreign ambassadors and the cultivated gentlemen of the Congress? It would be bad for Mexico if an uneducated man were to be President. There is one thing that I will not do—­and that is to take a position for which I am not fitted. . . .” On behalf of my paper I had to ask him this question five or six times. Finally he became exasperated. “I have told you many times,” he said, “that there is no possibility of my becoming President of Mexico. Are the newspapers trying to make trouble between me and my Jefe? This is the last time that I will answer that question. The next correspondent that asks me I will have him spanked and sent to the border.” For days afterward he went around grumbling humorously about the chatito (pug nose) who kept asking him whether he wanted to be President of Mexico. The idea seemed to amuse him. Whenever I went to see him after that he used to say, at the end of our talk: “Well, aren’t you going to ask me today whether I want to be President?” . . .

The Dream of Pancho Villa It might not be uninteresting to know the passionate dream—­the vision which animates this ignorant fighter, “not educated enough to be President of Mexico.” He told it to me once in these words: “When the new Republic is established there will never be any more army in Mexico. Armies are the greatest support of tyranny. There can be no dictator without an army. “We will put the army to work. In all parts of the Republic we will establish military colonies composed of the veterans of the Revolution. The State will give them grants of agricultural lands and establish big industrial enterprises to give them work. Three days a week they will work and work hard, because honest work is more important than fighting, and only honest work makes good citizens. And the other three days they will receive military instruction and go out and teach all the people how to fight. Then, when the Patria is invaded, we will just have to telephone from the palace at Mexico City, and in half a day all the Mexican people will rise from their fields and 312  John Reed

factories, fully armed, equipped and organized to defend their children and their homes. “My ambition is to live my life in one of those military colonies among my compañeros whom I love, who have suffered so long and so deeply with me. I think I would like the government to establish a leather factory there where we could make good saddles and bridles, because I know how to do that; and the rest of the time I would like to work on my little farm, raising cattle and corn. It would be fine, I think, to help make Mexico a happy place.” 3 Notes 1. The Underdogs, translated by Frederick H. Fornoff (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992), 40. 2. Luis Terrazas (the misspelling is in Reed’s original text) was a prominent Apache fighter in the northern state of Chihuahua, who rose to become one of Mexico’s wealthiest and most powerful regional caudillos. Together with his son-­in-­law, Enrique Creel, Terrazas achieved near-­total political and economic dominance in the state, a fact that is generally regarded as a major provocation of the revolution in Chihuahua. Eds. 3. In 1920 a new coalition led by Alvaro Obregón overthrew the government of Venustiano Carranza. The new government sought to ensure Villa’s loyalty by providing him with a large, remote estate in Chihuahua for his retirement. He ran the estate very much like one of the idyllic military colonies he described to Reed. His retirement was short-­lived, however, for he was gunned down on the streets of Parral in 1923, most certainly by supporters of his former Constitutionalist rivals, Obregón and Plutarco Elías Calles. Eds.

Pancho Villa  313

La Punitiva Anonymous

On March 9, 1916, Francisco “Pancho” Villa led five hundred guerrilla troops across the U.S. border to attack the small border town of Columbus, New Mexico, killing seventeen Americans. The attack was in retaliation for U.S. diplomatic recognition of the regime of Villa’s rival, Venustiano Carranza, as the legitimate government of Mexico. The attack caused considerable outrage in the United States, and since it was a presidential election year, it appeared some response was called for. On March 15, President Woodrow Wilson authorized the second major military intervention in the Mexican revolution (the first was the occupation of Veracruz in 1914): he sent a “punitive expedition” of six thousand (later increased to ten thousand) troops into Mexico with orders to capture Villa and disperse Villista bands operating near the border. The mission, led by General John J. (“Blackjack”) Pershing, failed miserably and was withdrawn in February 1917. The details as given in the following corrido were largely erroneous, but the sense of outraged and bellicose nationalism caused by “la punitiva” was clearly genuine. Indeed, Villa remains a beloved nationalist icon and secular saint in his native Chihuahua and among mexicanos along the border. On February twenty-­third, Carranza let the gringos in, To hunt for Pancho Villa With lots of planes and men. Carranza told them breathlessly, “If you can track and you are brave, I will let you search for Villa, Till you put him in his grave.” The palefaced men from Texas Were tired to the bone, After seven hours of walking They were crying to go home. So began the expeditions, Airplanes flying all around,

314

A cavalry column during the American Punitive Expedition in Mexico. The poem mocks Pershing’s failure to capture Villa, especially given the United States’ array of military resources. Photograph by Brown Brothers, ca. 1916– 17, from The Wind That Swept Mexico: The History of the Mexican Revolution of 1910–1942 by Anita Brenner and George R. Leighton (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1971), photo 12.

Hoping they’d find Pancho Villa, And put him in the ground. Villa saw the punitivas, And he played a little game, He dressed up as a gringo soldier And his troops all did the same. Villa painted little stars On a flag to fool the planes, When they swooped down to the sierra, Villa clapped them all in chains. He no longer rides on horseback And neither do his forces, For Villa now owns airplanes, And has no use for horses. The mounted gringos could not ride, Those on foot began to cry; La Punitiva  315

Villa passed them in his airplane And from above he yelled, “Goodbye!” When they thought they had killed Villa They let out a hearty shout: “We’ll be heroes back in Texas When we tell them of this rout!” Little did they realize That Pancho Villa was not dead; He was up in the sierra Where the gringos feared to tread. The gringos think we are so few They can score a lot of kills. But they have a thousand cannons And they leave them in the hills. When they came to old Chihuahua Folks believed in Villa’s boasts, When they saw how many gringos He had strung up from lampposts. The gringos searched through old Parral For crackers, ham, and flour, But the people there all told them, “There’s just cannonballs and powder.” They say that here in Mexico People only kill and die, But if one Mexican’s left standing He will wave our flag on high. Pancho Villa was a warrior, His cannons blasted to the end, Firing down to their last cartridge, Our great nation to defend. What were the gringos thinking? That war’s a silly game? They’re returning to their homeland now, Their faces flushed with shame. The gringos have their armored cars, And ships of every sort; But in all that really matters They will always come up short. 316  Anonymous

Pedro Martínez Oscar Lewis

Between 1943 and 1963, anthropologist Oscar Lewis conducted extensive tape-­recorded interviews with the members of a peasant family from the village of “Azteca” (actually, Tepoztlán, Morelos). The resulting volume, Pedro Martínez, is quite likely the most detailed autobiography ever produced by a Mexican peasant family. In the following excerpt, the family patriarch, Pedro Martínez, provides a rambling account of his revolutionary years as an active Zapatista combatant, while his wife Esperanza contributes an interesting counterpoint on the hardships suffered by the families the soldiers left behind.

Pedro In 1910, the action was in the north. It was still possible to work, then. So, once again, there I go to the haciendas looking for work. But the foremen didn’t do anything to us anymore. They were afraid, now, and besides we didn’t take it anymore. Well, there we were one day and it was time for lunch. We were all hunting for wood to make a fire. We had only cold tortillas to eat while those who belonged there, the permanent hands of the hacienda, had coffee and two pieces of bread. They would swallow it down as fast as they could and get back to work. When the call came to get to work, they were ready, but we were still gathering wood to make the fire to heat the tortillas. The foreman shouted, “Come on, up on your feet.” “But we haven’t had lunch yet.” “What’s that to me? Come on, on your feet. Time is up.” But nothing doing. Everybody said we wouldn’t go back to work until we had eaten. There were about sixty of us in a big circle. So the foreman said, “Oh, so you won’t, eh?” And he rode his horse into the circle and trampled the tortillas we were warming. The horse was about to step on one of the men but he grabbed it by the bridle. The foreman raised his whip to hit him. Then we stood up, all of us. We dropped the tortillas, napkins and everything, and each of us picked up a stone. In a single voice we said, “We are going to kill this one. What can they do to us? We are many.” 317

“Are you going to let go?” said the foreman. But the man didn’t let go. The foreman started to reach for his pistol, but he saw us all with stones. And we said, “Go ahead, go ahead. Draw your pistol. What are you waiting for?” And we said to the one who had his horse by the bridle, “Don’t let go, don’t let go!” The foreman didn’t touch his pistol now. Then we let him know that we were on the point of quitting, that we had not sold ourselves to anyone. “We’re going now. Get out of here before we cut you to pieces.” He left. Then the whole gang said, “Let’s go and leave the tools so we all have a right to our pay.” They still owed us for three days. Then everybody said that all they do was take the shirt off our backs. We said, “If they try to do anything to us, we’ll make mincemeat out of them all. Don’t give in!” The manager came, wearing boots up to here. He saw us all at the ticket tent. “Fellows! Why aren’t you working?” “Because the foreman did this, that, and the other to us.” “No, look, boys, go on and yoke up and I’ll pay you the full day. And as far as that damned foreman is concerned, I’ll take care of him.” He went to leave his horse and came back. He didn’t even stop to take off his spurs but went right to the tent. The foreman was there, making out the tickets, when he lit into him. He treated him like a dog and fired him. . . . There was justice then! Not like now. . . . In those days, it was the caciques in our own village who oppressed us most. They had money and rode fine horses and were always the officials. They took advantage of poor girls. If they liked a girl, they got her—­they always enjoyed fine women just because of the power they had. One of the head caciques died at eighty in the arms of a fifteen-­year-­old girl. Another, José Galindo, had yokes of oxen and hired many peasants. He gave the men tortillas and sent them to the fields, then he would go to their homes, just for a little while, to be with the wives. These rich men worked hand­in hand with the Díaz government and if someone complained he would be punished. . . . The Revolutionaries entered Azteca for the first time exactly on March 17, 1911. There weren’t many of them, only about thirty, led by Lucio Moreno. They wore their sombreros on the back of their heads and held their muskets in their hands as they rode in. I was on the road at the time, almost at the entrance to the village. With the help of my neighbors, I was carrying my wife to the temazcal for a steam bath because she had given birth to our first child. You see, it is the husband’s obligation to bring the water, to heat the stones in the bathhouse, and then to slowly, carefully, carry her there on his back with a tumpline. So that’s where I was when we heard them coming. Naturally, they took us by surprise. Moreno and his men had come to kill a few people and I was already resigning myself. I said, “Well, they will kill me because of my wife but I will not leave her.” I took her into a yard and crouched down behind the wall. 318  Oscar Lewis

“Now, how will I get out? If I run, the more likely they will kill me. Better let them find me here with my wife.” Well, I stayed there and some of them rode in and didn’t say anything to me. They went on riding fast, with their muskets high, running, running, until they reached the first corner of the main street. They shouted, “Long live the Virgin of Guadalupe! Long live Francisco I. Madero!” and rushed to the palacio and began to burn it. . . . Everything continued to burn there because they threw gasoline on it. At that time I didn’t even know what gasoline was. After that, Lucio Moreno’s men remounted and left for Elotepec. No fight took place. Nothing! The next day when we went to the hacienda to work, the foremen asked us what happened. “Have they entered Azteca? Did they enter already?” they wanted to know. “Yes, they were there.” “And how many of them were there?” “Hmm, well, about three thousand or so.” That’s what we told them! “Caramba! And what did they do?” “Nothing. That is, not to us. It’s the caciques they are after. They all ran away, all the caciques.” “And are they well armed?” “Uuy! Well armed, nothing but shotguns and plenty of ammunition!” “Újule! Then we are really in trouble. Look, if anything happens come and warn us.” “Sure, sure, don’t give it another thought. I’ll come.” Of course, I wasn’t going to come! Why should I? . . . Things got tighter as time went by. Everybody left, even the chickens! Everything was lost. I was left to the four winds. At the end of 1912, going into 1913, they didn’t let us work on the haciendas anymore. So I went back to doing what I did before, making rope. But the thick rope didn’t sell then, only lariats. With that we supported ourselves. I also began to plant in the hills, and that was all. That was my whole life now, planting the tlacolol [subsistence crops on the steep, rocky hillsides]. My wife did the same. “How else?” she said. “You can’t work on the haciendas now.” It reached the point where martial law was declared. There was no way of getting out now. At the end of 1913, and into 1914, you couldn’t even step out of the village because if the government came and found you walking, they killed you. And the troops dug everywhere, looking for buried coins, because in my village there was a lot of money buried. Think of it, even the very poor were saving then. If a peso, one of those great big old silver ones, fell into their hands, they wouldn’t change it and spend it but would go and pawn it to a rich man, if they needed a little money. Later they would get the peso out of hock and bury it. So the soldiers, the carrancistas, did a lot of digging. Pedro Martínez  319

That was when my second child, Manuel, was born. He died when he was eight months old. I was hiding in the hills when the troops took all the women to Cuernavaca. They came to take out my wife, though she was still in bed. She hadn’t yet got back her strength when they made her walk from Azteca to Cuernavaca. I was young then and we men were angry because they took away our families. About two hundred of us got together and we were thinking of rebelling and attacking the train because they said our families were going to be taken to Mexico City. We had all decided to rebel against the government, but no, we hadn’t eaten for two days and we went to look for food in the village. Uuy! What destruction we found there. Corn was scattered in the streets. . . . The carrancistas had destroyed everything. Somehow we found food. Then we heard the cry, “Here come the women! They freed them in Cuernavaca and now they are returning.” Esperanza was with my mother-­i n-­law, carrying the baby. There I go running to meet them. They were unharmed but because she had walked to and from Cuernavaca, my wife had a relapse and became ill. Then some soldiers entered my uncle Crescenciano’s house to take away his daughter Berta. He was blind and mean but he was very brave. He grabbed a stick and hit whomever he could. While he was clubbing them and they were kicking him, my cousin Berta ran away with the neighbors. She wasn’t violated but they practically killed my uncle. He went to Cuautla after that and died there. Later, Berta went off with the colonel. What else could she do, now that she had no one? . . . The first village to be burned was Santa María, in 1913. I was at home when it happened and I went to see it three days later. It was entirely destroyed. The carrancistas had burned everything.1 The dead were hanging from the trees. It was a massacre! Cows, oxen, pigs, and dogs had been killed and the people, poor things, went about picking up rotten meat to eat. All the corn and beans were burned. It was a terrible pity. The people of Santa María began to come to Azteca and that’s when the typhus epidemic started there. Two families came to my house and soon my entire barrio was sick. In every house there was fever and it spread through the village. My house looked like a hospital; all the sick people came to stay and then, újule, I got it and my wife, too. As my mother was dead, we went to my wife’s mother so she could take care of us. My brother-­in-­law was there and he got angry because we brought the sickness. But what else could I do? I left my wife with her mother and went to my sister, who was living in the hills. She would give me a taco, for with my wife sick what was I going to eat? There, my other brother-­in-­law got angry because I carried the sickness to them. But I decided to be comfortable and I said, “Someone must support me until I recover!”

320  Oscar Lewis

Well, both brothers-­in-­law and my mother-­in-­law got sick. She even died. Between the epidemic and the carrancistas we were nearly wiped out! Two weeks later, the soldiers came and burned my house. They wanted to kill me but they saw how I was and asked my wife what I had and she said, “The fever.” Then they were afraid and left me alone. They took us out and set fire to the house. It was made of cane and they threw on some hay and lighted it and reduced it to nothing. That day they burned the village and threw out people everywhere. Even the municipal building was burned down. Before we left my house my wife said, “Let’s put out the fire.” And I said, “If I am going to die, let it burn up. Let’s go.” We left it burning and went to the hills, along with all the neighbors whose houses were burned. While we were running away, Carranza was bringing in more soldiers and telling them they could do whatever they pleased in the state of Morelos because it was Zapata’s state. They could sack and kill, and all civil guarantees were suspended. He gave the order to destroy us and they killed and hanged everyone, even dogs, pigs, and cattle. That’s why it makes me angry when they celebrate a fiesta for him now. When I see Carranza’s picture it nauseates me. I cannot bear to see it because of the ugly way he mistreated us then. We lived in the hills for about three months. I built a little shelter for my wife and me and the baby. It was the rainy season and we had a little corn, so we managed until we dared go down to the village again. By then we lived wherever we could. . . . The Madero Revolution was almost over, and I still hadn’t joined in the fighting. Madero was already President when Emiliano Zapata began to be heard of. It was in 1913 when his name was talked about, but we just criticized. Then you began to hear about Emiliano Zapata everywhere. It was Zapata this and Zapata that. But we said that he was only a peasant, not an intellectual man. . . . I liked Zapata’s plan and that’s why, when he came to my village, I went to him. I still hadn’t joined but I went up in the hills with tortillas and water. Instead of going to my tlacolol I went to see Zapata in his camp. He was in a little house but they wouldn’t let me go in. They were suspicious. There were two guards right in front of the door. I stood at a distance, watching. He was sitting inside with his general staff. And he calls out to me, “What do you have there, friend?” “Nothing, señor. Just my tortillas.” “Come in.” So there I go and now the others didn’t stop me. He was a tall man, thin, and with a big mustache. . . . He had a thin high voice, like a lady’s. He was a charro and mounted bulls and lassoed them, but when he spoke his voice was very delicate. “Let’s see your tortillas. Take them out.”

Pedro Martínez  321

And I gave them all to him. How he liked my tortillas! He and his staff finished them off. “And what do you have in your gourd? Pulque?” “No, señor, water.” And he drank it. What I wanted was to speak with Zapata, to sit with him. I had ideas although I still couldn’t read. . . . After that I joined Zapata and was with him through 1914, 1915 and 1916. Luckily, I wasn’t a maderista, I was a zapatista. I took up arms to go south with him. I said to myself, “I can’t stand this anymore. It’s better that I go.” My wife stayed behind. Now we knew what we were fighting for—­Land, Water, Forests and Justice. That was all in the plan. It was for this reason that I became a Revolutionary. It was for a cause! Many joined just to get rich, to steal whatever they could. Their sons are rich now, because the fathers robbed. When a plaza was captured, they would sack the houses and give half the loot to their officers. But others were true revolutionaries and joined to help Zapata. In my judgment, what Zapata was fighting for was just. Porfirio’s government took everything away from us. Everything went to the rich, the hacendados, those with the power were the masters, and we had nothing. We were their servants because we could not plant or make use of any lands that did not belong to the hacienda. So they had us subjugated. We were completely enslaved by the hacendados. That is what Zapata fought to set right. I joined the Revolutionary ranks because of the martial law in Morelos, declared by Carranza. If they found you sitting in your house, they would shoot you. If they found you walking, they would shoot you. If they found you working, they would shoot you. That was what they called martial law. There was no law! Naturally, when I saw this, I said to myself, “Rather than have them kill me sitting, standing or walking, I’d better get out of here.” And so I went to war along with the zapatistas.

Esperanza I was not afraid when the Revolution began because I didn’t know what it was like. After I saw what it was, I was very much afraid. I saw how the federal troops would catch the men and kill them. They carried off animals, mules, chickens, clothes. The women who came with the soldiers were the ones who took away everything. The government soldiers, and the rebel soldiers too, violated the young girls and the married women. They came every night and the women would give great shrieks when they were taken away. Afterward, at daybreak, the women would be back in their houses. They wouldn’t tell what happened to them and I didn’t ask because then people would say, “Why do you want to know? If you want to know, let them take you out tonight!” 322  Oscar Lewis

For greater safety, we would sleep in the corral. Our house was very exposed because the street is one of the main entrances to the village and the soldiers would pass that way. Pedro took us to a relative’s house farther into the village. There the soldiers never entered. The zapatistas were well liked in the village, because although it is true they sometimes carried off young girls, they left the majority of women in peace. And after all, everyone knew what kind of girls they took. The ones who like that sort of thing! Sometimes the zapatistas would come down to the village and send someone from house to house to ask for tortillas. At other times, the government troops did the same thing. We always gave them whatever they asked for. After all, what else could we do? But the government men were the ones who behaved the worst and did us the most harm. One time the government called all the women together in the village plaza. I was in bed. My baby had been born a month before. Sick as I was, they made me get up and go. When they had us all there, they told us to go and grind corn and make tortillas for the soldiers and then come to sleep with them that night. We ground the corn and delivered the tortillas and went off into the hills. Sleep with the soldiers! Not for anything would we have stayed for that! My mother remained in the village with my brother because he had corn and beans to guard. Sometimes Pedro would leave me with my mother and he would go back to the hills and come down at night. One day my mother died. She died at three o’clock one afternoon and we buried her at six o’clock because they were saying, “The government is coming.” We didn’t make a coffin for her, poor thing. We just wrapped her in a petate, put a board on either side of her and buried her. Pedro was angry when he came home that night and learned that I had already buried her. I didn’t feel my mother’s death, probably on account of it being a time of revolution. Since we were always on the run from the government, I didn’t grieve so much over her. After my mamá was gone, Pedro took me with him to the hills. There was no work here anymore and Pedro had nothing to do. There was no way to earn money for food. But I didn’t want him to go as a zapatista. I would say to him, “Even if we don’t eat, Pedro.” He would answer, “What are we going to live on? If one works, the government grabs and kills him.” That’s why when someone cried, “Here comes the government!” Pedro would take his sarape and make for the hills. One day Pedro appeared, carrying his rifle. He told me, “Well, I’ve done it. I’ve joined up.” He had become a zapatista because they offered to give him food. I got very angry but he said at least he would have something to eat and furthermore they would pay him. Then he told me he would have to go to Mexico City with the rebels and he promised to send me money. He went with the zapatistas and left me without a centavo. There I was Pedro Martínez  323

with nothing and I had two children to support, the girl of two years and the boy of two months. Also, I had in my care Pedro’s cousin who was about eight years old. I cried in anguish because I didn’t know what to do. . . .

Pedro Ever since [the Revolution], I bear testimony that God saved me from all dangers. Because I was a believer, that’s why. Having always been a very pious Catholic, whenever I went into action I would commend myself to God and nothing ever happened to me, not even a scratch. Not then or since. Yes, I came out of the war with a lot of experience. I have been in some very tight spots, at that time and later, too, in politics. All my former political opponents are gone, all gone. And so I am a living testimony that the one who entrusts himself to God will be protected from everything. . . . We still kept fighting. I would leave my wife in a nearby village and would go to join the battle. We had many combats over here near Santa María, and still more over toward Yautepec. Marino Solís, the general from my village, was in charge at that time. It was my colonel, Leobardo Galván, who joined us up with General Marino. Sometimes we were ahead and sometimes the carrancistas were. There were heavy losses, men and horses too. Fleeing all the time! Yes, sir, to the south. After they drove us out of Santa María, we went to Tejalpa. After a few days in Tejalpa, we went on to Jiltepec. One week in Jiltepec and then to San Vicente, where we hung around for a month. The people were tired. They didn’t want to fight anymore. I remember well when Zapata came to San Vicente. He had been driven out of Cuernavaca and he said to us, “If you don’t want to fight anymore we’ll all go to the devil! What do you mean, you don’t want to fight?” Everyone was quiet. They didn’t respond. “Bah!” he said. “Then there’s nothing I can do.” We were exhausted, sleepy, tired, and the carrancistas kept chasing us, almost to Jojutla, near the border of Guerrero. Marino went to the general headquarters in El Higuerón and got together five or ten thousand men. He said, “Who wants to go with me? Let’s go and break up their base! Our situation is desperate. We are at the state boundary. Where else can we go? Now let us go back!” Then he opened fire and his men cleared a path all the way back to the municipio of Azteca and made camp in the hills of Tlayacapan. There his brother Teodoro, who was in hiding, joined him. Marino was very brave. During the night they met the carrancistas and overthrew them all. He killed so many in Yautepec they piled up like stones. Later, he finished off practically all the carrancistas of the north because they ate mangoes and got sick and while they were stretched out Marino went in and just had to take aim and zas, zas, he finished them. That’s why they named him General Mango. At that time, the peasants brought their mangoes to Yautepec. There was nothing to eat so people ate mangoes. A detachment of 324  Oscar Lewis

carrancistas was there, and when the peasants entered the city carrying their net sacks the soldiers took away their fruit and ate it. In a few days, zas, the entire army was shivering with chills, they were all dying of malaria. All of them! And what doctor was there then? What medicine? The streets were full of corpses and the women who followed their men in the army searched among the bodies to find their dead. But I didn’t see any of that because by that time I wasn’t in the army anymore. Meanwhile, Zapata followed the lines to Yautepec and went as far as Tizapán. He had cannons and machine guns but he lost them all. That was the last big battle of the war, there in Tizapán, in 1916. That’s where I finally had it. The battle was something awful! The shooting was tremendous! It was a completely bloody battle, three days and three nights. But I took it for only one day and then I left. I quit the army and left for Jojutla, without a centavo in my pocket. I said to myself, “It’s time now I got back to my wife, to my little children. I’m getting out!” That’s why I left the army, for my wife. How I loved my wife! I didn’t leave because I was afraid to fight but because of my wife, who had to find food for herself and the children. I said to myself, “No, my family comes first and they are starving. Now I’m leaving!” I saw that the situation was hopeless and that I would be killed and they would perish. . . . I worked in Guerrero for three years, as a plowman. They grew tomatoes and chile peppers there. I also planted corn for myself on the hillside. Then one of my babies died of a scorpion sting. It was a boy, too, twenty-­t wo months old. We were making rope and had gone to eat when the scorpion stung him. It happened at about ten in the morning and he died at seven that night. We went to Buena Vista to bury him the next day. It was about two hours’ walk to Buena Vista. After that I joined up with another work gang and stayed with them a year, cultivating chile peppers. Of our three children, now we had only the little girl María left, and she was sick, too. María was our first child and our favorite while she was the only one. My wife loved her as much as I did, and because we were ignorant you might say we were responsible for her death. Like fools, we didn’t know how to take care of children so we gave her all she wanted to eat. We gave her bread every little while, bread and meat. I gave her all my meat . . . meat was cheap then. It was always, “Come, this is for my daughter for I love her so much.” With that we practically killed her because her stomach went bad. She became sick with ético [a wasting disease accompanied by chronic diarrhea]. She lasted a long time, until she was seven, but she never got better. And the Revolution made things worse. After that we had no way to cure her. There were no doctors and she died. They say she died because we loved her too much. On the same day my little daughter died a battle broke out in Buena Vista between the turncoats and the fleeing zapatistas. . . . The shooting went on Pedro Martínez  325

for days so when it was time to bury my little girl we couldn’t go to the cemetery in Buena Vista. We had to go to Tlaxmalaca and that’s where we buried her. And so we had no one left then. But the following year, in 1917, my daughter Conchita was born. She was like a first child and we favored her a lot. She would throw things and we couldn’t do anything with her. That’s the way she was, very bad-­tempered. When we left Guerrero she was about two years old. We had been there three full years. In all that time I had no other women, absolutely none. I couldn’t because I didn’t earn enough. But I didn’t suffer the hunger people in my village were suffering. . . .

Esperanza [After my children died] I remained all alone. . . . The death of the children affected Pedro, but it is not the same as with a woman. He cried a little but the grief soon passed. I believe men don’t feel, or they feel very little. I feel deeply. Three months went by after their death and I was still crying and crying. I kept remembering how they were .  .  . the way they walked, the clothing they had . . . I even wanted to sleep in the cemetery and stay there all the time looking at the piece of earth that covered them. And he, when he saw that I was crying, would scold me and that made me angrier and more resentful. . . . I was like a new person after I started to have children again. I was no longer sad and lonely. . . . It made me so happy when Conchita was born. We loved her very much and it was as if she had been our firstborn. We spoiled her a lot as it was five years before the following child was born. We spoiled her, but we also beat her when she cried. . . . We came back from Guerrero because Pedro did not want to stay there any longer. He said, “We have our own house in Azteca and that is where we belong.” I was sick, too. I think it was from “cold” as they did not bathe me in the temazcal [traditional steambath] after I had Conchita and I didn’t always have “hot” food to eat. Pedro would go out to sell the tomatoes he had planted. He would leave me sick and alone. . . . My trouble was that my abdomen hurt me very much. I was skin and bones and had fevers every day. Pedro had a lot of people look at me, but nobody cured me. He said to me, “As soon as I have the harvest in, we will go to Azteca. They will cure you there.” That is the reason we went. When we got to Azteca, he had a woman look at me. “It’s because you are pregnant,” she said. “That’s why your belly is big.” I was here for about five months and nothing changed. So then Pedro said, “The thing is that you are not pregnant at all.” And he took me to another curer. This one said that I had “cold” in the belly. . . . I was sick and that was the reason I wasn’t having 326  Oscar Lewis

children. . . . She gave me a medicine to take and smeared greases all over my body, oil of camomile, oil of rosemary, and others. . . . Then, when I was better, my aunt Gloria said to me, “Silly girl, now that you are cured, you are going to have another baby.” . . . I wanted to be cured as I never felt right. But I didn’t want any more children. I have always had a horror of having children. The thought of being pregnant would frighten me and sometimes it would make me angry because I was the one who was going to suffer. I cried and cried every time I felt that I was pregnant. . . . At night, when my husband took me I became angry because of the danger he put me in. But when I didn’t want Pedro to come near me he scolded, saying, “You don’t want me because you have some other man.” So I had to let him and then I would be pregnant again. I know that what happens is God’s will, so I say, if children come, good, if not, so much the better! I was glad to be back in Azteca. The village was the same but a lot of people were missing because they had died of hunger. . . . Almost none of my people were still living. My brother was alive but he was far away in Puebla. His wife had died and so had his children. . . . When he came back later, it was just to die . . . he was very sick by then. The Revolution was almost over when we came back from Guerrero and Pedro began to work in the fields [and] planted the tlacolol. . . . Five and a half years after Conchita’s birth, Rufina was born. It didn’t matter to us whether the child was a boy or a girl. Pedro said that it was all the same to him. “Whatever the ladle brings.” All children mean money, because when they begin to work, they earn. Note 1. Pedro’s memory may be a bit faulty here, as he appears to suggest that the carran­cistas were committing atrocities in Morelos in 1913. During this time, the zapatistas and ca­ rrancistas were at least nominally allied against the dictatorship of Victoriano Huerta. The carrancistas did not make serious incursions into Morelos until early 1916. Eds.

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Amelio Robles’s Gender Battles in the Zapatista Army Gabriela Cano

We have seen how Zapatismo became one of the epic revolution’s most popular regional agrarian movements. Moreover, the personal accounts of Pedro and Esperanza Martínez afforded an intimate glimpse of the horrific impact that the revolution visited upon the men and women of Zapatismo whose families were dislocated by “la bola.” Over the past two decades historians have rewritten the history of the Mexican revolution from the perspective of women and gender relationships, asking to what extent the great upheaval was truly a revolution for women and whether deep-­seated patriarchal relations were transformed during the fighting and under the new revolutionary state that consolidated in its wake. Gabriela Cano, one of the most distinguished historians of revolutionary and postrevolutionary Mexico, has made foundational contributions to these discussions. In the selection below, which focuses on the life and military career of Zapatista colonel Amelio Robles, she expands the boundaries of the revolution’s historiography of gender and sexuality, examining the unusual transgendering of Amelia Robles, a small-­town rural woman from the southern state of Guerrero. Robles joined the Zapatista movement and, within the context of the chaotic military struggle, actively forged a masculine identity that he would maintain after the revolution and for the remainder of his public and private life. Robles’s gender transition, Cano argues, illuminates how Mexico’s revolutionary process simultaneously reinforced the nation’s prevailing gender norms while also opening cracks in them. Sifting through newly discovered documents in both Mexico’s National Defense Ministry Archives and the National Institute of History and Anthropology’s Archive of Family Testimonies, Cano pieces together Robles’s gender transformation during the war years, which was validated not only by his comrades-­in-­arms but also in the nation’s official military records, where he was honored as a (male) “Veterano de la Revolución.” Nevertheless, in later decades Robles’s masculinity became the subject of some dispute. The former Zapatista revolutionary was subsequently refashioned as an exemplar of women’s participation in the armed movement. The denial of Robles’s masculinity and the attempt to feminize him was illustrated in journalistic and his-

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torical accounts that advanced a portrayal of Zapatismo that left little room for complex gender identities like Robles’s. The central character in Cano’s account, Amelio Robles, joined the Zapatista struggle to leave a small rural community that placed rigid restrictions on the autonomy of women. Unlike many Zapatistas, Robles’s motivation was neither ideological nor economic; it sprang from a desire to pursue the less scripted path of a rebel insurgent. On the field of battle, in the midst of the revolution’s destructive impulses, Robles created a masculine identity and physical demeanor that he maintained long after the violence ended. One can almost see it: a smile of satisfaction spreading across Amelio Robles’s face as he looks at the studio portrait in which he poses like a dandy in the dark suit, white shirt, tie, wide-­brimmed black hat, leather shoes, and a white handkerchief peeking out of the breast pocket.1 Standing with a cigarette in one hand and the other placed prominently over his revolver, as if to draw attention to the weapon holstered in his belt. The staged photo was taken around 1915 in one of many photographic studios that flourished across the nation during the first decades of the twentieth century, when technological simplification and falling costs made it possible to satisfy a growing demand for portraits. Studio portraits sought to establish the social identity of individuals being photographed by following the prevailing code of etiquette. Posing with elegant decor and furniture projected a cosmopolitan attitude, while the prominently exhibited pistol symbolized the subject’s virility. The masculinity of the pose, gesture, and mode of dress are perfectly credible. No one would guess that the dandy in the portrait had once been a rural young lady. The radical and permanent transgendering of a rural woman from the state of Guerrero occurred during the Mexican Revolution. Amelio Robles—­ previously, Amelia Robles—­joined an uprising taking place across southern Mexico under the agrarian banner of Emiliano Zapata and forged a masculine identity within the rough environs of war. His link to the Zapatista movement was not ideological, but emerged instead from a passion for the intensity of war, so full of dangers and strong emotions. Once the armed struggle had ended, Amelio Robles continued to live as a man, maintaining this masculinity for the rest of his life, in public and private, even through old age and infirmity. Unlike the backdrop, the pistol and cigarette in the image were not props from the photographic studio, but Robles’s personal belongings. His masculine appearance expressed his sense of being a man; it was not a momentary pose for the camera. Amelio Robles’s masculinization should also be distinguished from strategic transvestitism—­the adoption of male dress in order to pass as a man—­to which some women resorted during wartime to protect themselves from

Amelio Robles’s Gender Battles  329

Portrait of Amelio Robles. Photograph by Casasola, ca. 1915, Fototeca Nacional del inah , Colección Archivo Casasola, 63944.

the sexual violence that intensifies during armed conflicts, to gain access to military commands prohibited to women, or simply to fight as soldiers and not as soldaderas, that is, without the gender restrictions that usually burden women in combat. Women who adopted male identities during the war usually returned later to wearing women’s clothing and performing female roles in society as mothers and wives. Not Amelio Robles. His radical change in gender and sexual identity was not simply due to a pragmatic desire to enjoy the social advantages of men, but rather the product of a deeper, more vital desire to radically transform the female identity assigned to him at birth in order to make himself masculine in every aspect of life. Amelio Robles made the transition from an imposed feminine identity to a desired masculinity: he felt like a man, acted like a man, and constructed 330  Gabriela Cano

a male appearance. Little is known about his sexuality, but reports suggest that he sustained romantic relationships with feminine women and that he once courted a schoolmate; these were erotic relationships inscribed within a heterosexual logic in which Amelio Robles performed the masculine role. Nothing in the available sources suggests that he saw himself as a butch lesbian or a tomboy. He did not identify himself as a transgendered person. The term transgender did not exist in his time, but it is useful for understanding his masculinity. Robles adopted the physical appearance, the behavior, and the gender role culturally assigned to the opposite gender in binary systems. His transition from a woman to a man involved neither surgery nor hormone therapy; he gave himself a masculine social identity and performed as a man using only the cultural resources available to him in a rural area of Mexico. He dexterously manipulated those resources, including a modern press that took an interest in the story of the Zapatista revolutionary and legitimized him. The poses, gestures, and attitudes involved in this daily performance were complemented by a carefully selected wardrobe, featuring the pants, shirts, jackets, and hats common in rural environments. He chose shirts with large chest pockets that concealed his small breasts. Studio photography was central to the establishment and acceptance of this masculine appearance. Photographic portraits made it possible for common people to fix their desired physical images in lasting prints. Amelio Robles’s masculinity was a cultural declaration of the body and a political act that troubled the social assignation of gender and heterosexual norms.2 His transgendering questioned the naturalness attributed to the feminine and the masculine; it subverted the ingrained notion of gender identity as an unavoidable consequence of anatomy that neatly defined men and women into social groups with immutable qualities. Transgendering processes interrogate (and sometimes reify) the fixed categories of man and woman. Such categories are often considered transparent and unchanging realities, but their plasticity becomes evident in light of gender transitions such as Amelio Robles’s. His masculinization did not take place overnight; it was a gradual process that began during the forced displacement and social disorder of wartime. In combat, manners and reserves were abandoned, creating spaces of confusion that allowed Robles to begin to reconstruct himself as a man and enjoy acceptance among comrades-­in-­arms, who admired his courage and capacity as a guerrillero. Interest in Amelio Robles’s story goes beyond its particulars: his figure can be seen as a site of debate, a dispute around the definition and meaning of gender, of masculinity and femininity, framed in the discourse of postrevolutionary Mexican nationalism. Coronel Robles embodied the ideal of the male revolutionary soldier: courageous and daring, capable of responding to aggression immediately and violently, and skilled in handling arms and horses. His romantic relationships with women conformed to conventional Amelio Robles’s Gender Battles  331

heterosexual models and reproduced the gender polarity of feminine and masculine identities. Amelio Robles’s masculine performance was supported by identifying documents that accredited his membership in various social and political organizations. The credentials’ identifying photographs confirm Robles’s masculinity, whose name and signature always figure as male.3 Perhaps the greatest evidence of the effectiveness of his masculine appearance is the medical certificate required for admission to the Confederation of Veterans of the Revolution. Issued in 1948 by a medical clinic in Mexico City, the certificate attested to Robles’s good health, age, and the scars from six bullet wounds on different parts of his body, including one in the thigh and another in the armpit—­a ll without alluding to his sexual anatomy. The medical investigation required by the Confederation of Veterans of the Revolution was not a thorough examination but rather a prerequisite intended to certify any war wounds, considered irrefutable proof of valor on the field of battle. The Ministry of National Defense (Secretaría de Defensa Nacional, or sdn) legitimated Amelio Robles’s masculine identity by decorating him in 1974 as a veterano of the revolution, not as a veterana, an honor bestowed on over three hundred women for their services in the revolutionary cause. The recognition of the country’s highest military officials must have provided Amelio Robles with enormous satisfaction, although the sdn did not corroborate the rank of colonel (or issue a pension) that he claimed in the Zapatista army, which had no systematic procedures for promotion. Amelio Robles adopted forms of masculinity particular to his rural environment, a cultural code that included daring courage and constant shows of force; these characteristics, in later years, led him to initiate violent personal conflicts that killed more than one person. Like many men, Amelio frequently indulged in alcoholic excesses; he was authoritarian; he was a womanizer, cursed, and was rarely inclined to account for his actions to family members, not even during the periods of illness that marked a lengthy old age. His family accepted Amelio’s masculinity as a fact; his grandnieces addressed him as “uncle” or “grandfather” and learned his sexual identity only after they became adults, since the subject of his queerness was never raised at home. Amelio Robles took the stereotype of masculinity that prevailed at his rung of the social ladder to an extreme. Paradoxically, his peculiar creation and re-­creation of masculine values unsettled the naturalness with which they were recognized as virile attributes. The paradox was that Amelio Robles’s successful gender transition simultaneously subverted and reinforced normative heterosexuality and the stereotypical masculinity it re-­created.

332  Gabriela Cano

Amelia the Girl According to the civil registry, Amelia Robles was born in 1889 in Xochipala, Guerrero. The birth certificate leaves no room for doubt: the baby presented to the commissary by her mother and father was a girl. She came from a family of ranchers, a social class of midsized landowners who were the main political actors of the Mexican Revolution in Guerrero. Robles’s connection to Zapatismo was not so much ideological as elemental, resulting from a taste for guerrilla life. She discovered, in her words, “the sensation of being completely free,” something she had not experienced while living as a woman. She was good with horses, a talent that was highly valued in guerrilla war. When reminiscing about revolutionary times, Robles referred little to agrarianism and social radicalism; however, he delighted in tales of daily life on the battlefield. Like many other Zapatistas, Robles left the Zapatista army, which had increasingly weakened, recognized the federal government as legitimate around 1918, and eventually joined the Mexican Army. He served under the leadership of former Zapatista Adrián Castrejón, who would be appointed governor of Guerrero in 1928. During shared experiences of combat, Robles, his officer, and his comrades-­in-­arms (which now included Castrejón’s men) forged powerful ties. In this way, they further consolidated bonds of friendship and homosocial solidarity, which contributed in a significant way to the official recognition of Robles’s masculine self. Aware of Robles’s peculiar identity, Castrejón often referred to Robles in the feminine as the Coronela Robles, but he seemed to support Robles’s masculinization and was instrumental in his incorporation to the Socialist Party of Guerrero and the League of Agrarian Communities, both of which provided Robles with political influence in his town. To be classified as a revolutionary veteran, one had to apply for authorization to the sdn by providing a series of letters of recommendation and proofs of merit. These endorsements conformed with criteria established by the Mexican Legion of Honor without necessarily establishing incontrovertible versions of events that had taken place decades earlier and whose details had most likely been forgotten. Given that it was commonplace to adjust merit and service records to reflect military reports provided by superior officers, it must have seemed equally reasonable to Robles to change the sex registered on his birth certificate so that his main document of identity would conform to his appearance and internal sensation of being a man. His personal file in military archives includes an apocryphal civil-­registry act that certifies the birth of a boy, Amelio Malaquías Robles Ávila. Except for the baby’s name and sex, all other data coincides with the original birth certificate found in the corresponding civil-­registry book. Convinced of his masculinity and enjoying the political protection of Governor Adrián Castrejón and of a netAmelio Robles’s Gender Battles  333

work of social relations in the region, Amelio Robles must have felt confident that it was appropriate to present apocryphal documentation in order to be classified as a veterano—­not a veterana—­of the revolution.

Unconcealable Realities During the armed movement, sexual violence that especially targeted the female population increased in direct proportion to revolutionary violence. At the same time, for some individuals the revolution also opened up possibilities of self-­determination that previously had remained beyond reach. The war caused geographic displacement, and a “temporary demolition of modesty” ensued, making “the realities of desire unconcealable,” at least within certain exceptional spaces such as the one that allowed Amelio Robles to enjoy relative acceptance, spaces that had no equivalent in urban areas or towns, as far as we know. Robles’s transgendering enjoyed relative tolerance precisely because it exaggerated the masculine values exalted by the civil war. This does not mean, however, that tolerance toward Amelio Robles was simple or universal. Amelio chose to settle in Iguala in order to avoid hostilities in his hometown, Xochipala, where he owned family property, although he did return home years later. According to some accounts, Amelio Robles was assaulted by a group of men who wanted to reveal the secret of his anatomy, and in self-­defense he killed two of his aggressors, costing him a jail sentence that he served in the state capital. This imprisonment is rumored to have inflicted additional humiliation, as Amelio was held in women’s facilities. Moreover, his identity was the butt of many crass jokes, even among those who offered him their protection. Robles’s masculinity fit within the functions socially assigned to men and women within twentieth-­century Mexican rural society. As a typical rural man, Amelio never took on the domestic tasks he must have learned in his youth, when he was raised as a small-­town Catholic lady while also becoming an expert shot, rider, and horseman.

The Essentialist Turn In time, recognition of Amelio Robles’s transgender condition eroded. Someone who had achieved acceptance as a man during his lifetime in his social and family circles, and even by his country’s highest military authority, ended up, in the 1980s, as a symbol of “the revolutionary woman.” This conceptualization was imposed as the result of an understandable commitment to appraise the achievements and rights of women. However, it dismissed the effective masculinization of Robles, the fact that the sdn had recognized him as a revolutionary veteran, and the truth that everyone addressed him as a 334  Gabriela Cano

man. The village dandy who proudly bore arms, confidently flaunted a virile body, and boasted of his machismo and courage in the Zapatista war and as a soldier in the service of the Mexican Army was honored as a conventional revolutionary woman when the Amelia Robles Museum-­House opened its doors in 1989, five years after his death. Two purposes converged in the museum. On one hand, it commemorated the contributions of women whose actions were consistently relegated to a secondary role in the official history of military heroes. On the other, it commemorated local history, conventionally subordinated to a centralist perspective that valued regional historic processes solely from the standpoint of nation-­state formation. The erasure of Amelio Robles’s transgender identity resulted from an understandable and necessary eagerness to recognize what should have been obvious: that women are historical subjects who have made significant contributions to civic life and all aspects of history. However, such restorative efforts attribute fixed qualities to the categories of woman and man and, therefore, recognize neither the elasticity of gender constructions nor marginalized expressions of desire. This heteronormative conceptualization carries implicit attitudes of phobia and condemnation of gay, transgender, and transsexual identities. Some paradoxes of this essentialist conceptualization of gender can be appreciated through the narrative elaborated by Gertrude Duby, who was exiled in Mexico from Switzerland during the Second World War. She visited Robles in his town in the early 1940s as part of a project to document the participation of Zapatista women in the Mexican Revolution. A militant in the socialist movement opposing fascism in Europe, Duby imagined Mexico as a land of social revolution, rural traditions, and ancient cultures. This was an idealized vision shared by many foreigners who visited Mexico, intrigued by the country’s possibilities of social emancipation, which appeared to be canceled in the Old World. She constructed an idealized story of Emiliano Zapata as revolutionary peasant leader who emulated the socialist aims of the Russian Revolution. Gertrude Duby traveled extensively in the Zapatista region in order to interview several female revolutionaries. Amelio Robles made the strongest impression on her. Visiting Robles at home, she asked him questions about his participation in the revolution, addressing the Zapatista at all times as a male, as everyone else did. However, both her field notes and the final version of her chronicle refer to Robles in the feminine: “La Coronela Amelia Robles will forgive me for treating her as a woman; she honors the female sex with her courage, intelligence, and industriousness.” According to Duby, Robles’s masculinity was not the expression of an authentic subjectivity and physical identity resulting from a powerful, intimate desire, but rather a pragmatic resource used to confront the social restrictions weighing down on the female sex. “During a century in which Amelio Robles’s Gender Battles  335

women are relegated to second-­class status because of their sex and in which their capacities are considered worthless,” she wrote, “in a town far from the highway, it is my understanding that la Coronela Amelia Robles lives, works, and serves her people by dressing as a man and acting like one.” From Duby’s perspective, Robles represented an emancipatory ideal in which men and women shared public responsibilities and women did not dedicate themselves exclusively to the home. Instead, they participated in social life in an egalitarian utopia, a vision that had inspired Duby’s militant efforts as far back as her leadership of the feminine section of the Swiss Social Democratic Party in the early 1920s. The photographs featuring Amelio Robles capture his masculinity of pose and appearance. Confronted by the obvious, Duby described Robles’s “men’s clothing, short hair, the will to be treated as a man.” However, Duby, who was a keen observer and noted that Robles’s skin was not dark as most Zapatistas’, pointed out features that undermined the masculinity of Robles’s appearance: “Her voice is strong, but melodious and not masculine; her skin is fine and very white.” In addition, Duby interpreted stereotypically feminine, even maternal, characteristics in the hospitality and protective, warm attitude of “la Coronela Robles” toward visitors: “Despite the late hour, we were served an excellent dinner with genuine hospitality; later, in a bed prepared for me with very white sheets and warm, soft blankets, I spent the night in perfect rest.” The person described by Duby does not seem to be the same described by others. Duby’s desire was to find in revolutionary and indigenous Mexico a local figure who would incarnate her own ideals of revolution, social justice, and egalitarian emancipation for women. Like many other authors who sought visibility for women’s participation in historical processes, Duby attributes a coherence and a unique meaning to the activity of women who participated in the Zapatista revolutionary faction. She does not consider that the armed movement might have held diverse meanings for its protagonists, both men and women, or recognize that despite its destructive momentum, the war may also have made possible the expression of unconcealable realities of desire, including Amelio Robles’s marginalized and silenced desire to become a man. He certainly would not have forgiven Duby for “treating her as a woman.” Duby’s narrative was implicitly homophobic and transphobic, even though it was inspired by a form of feminism that seeks to vindicate women as social and political actors. The most arduous battle fought by Colonel Robles was not out in the open and did not smell of gunpowder, nor did it require bearing the agrarian, ideological arms of the Mexican Revolution. It was a cultural battle, a slow and silent struggle, whose great victory was to become a man by denying a female physical anatomy. Amelio Robles sculpted the body he desired for himself and lived as a man for seventy of his ninety-­four long years. For seven decades, during which he acted and felt like a man, 336  Gabriela Cano

he sustained a masculine presentation and behavior. Bedecked in military uniform, suit and tie, or simply peasant-­style trousers and wool jacket, Amelio displayed a body whose virility most people recognized. When he died, rumor held that in his final moments, Amelio Robles requested that he be buried dressed as a woman, thus denying the masculinity he had sustained in life, occasionally at gunpoint. This purported eagerness to normalize his masculine identity prevailed on his tombstone. The obituary of la coronela Zapatista contradicted the intimate joy of Amelio Robles: to feel, present, and know himself as a man. People of transgender identity like Amelio Robles are sometimes seen as positive symbols of transgression; at other times, their gender and physical aspects are perceived as inauthentic manifestations that are ridiculous, or even grotesque, reinforcing the conservative stereotypes of masculine and feminine. However, Amelio Robles’s transgendering should be seen neither as an optimistic reaffirmation nor as a refutation of gender ideology to be judged positively or negatively. Rather, it is a method—­as legitimate as any other—­of articulating an individual way of being and feeling through the cultural resources at hand and within contemporary cultural debates regarding the masculine and feminine. Interwoven with social conflicts, this process exposes tensions between rural and urban environments, the transnational circulation of cultural representations, and the construction of memories regarding the Mexican Revolution. Notes 1. Amelio Robles’s successful transgendering makes it necessary to use both masculine and feminine pronouns when writing about this person. “He” and “his” are used to refer to Amelio Robles during the long period of his life when his masculine identity was widely recognized, while “she” and “her” are used to refer to Robles in early life, when she lived as a woman. In Spanish the grammatical gender is indicated by an -­o ending, rendering the name masculine—­Amelio—­and an -­a ending turns it into feminine: Amelia. 2. Sylvia Molloy, “The Politics of Posing,” in Hispanisms and Homosexualities, ed. Sylvia Molloy and Robert McKee Irwin (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998), 141–60. 3. No direct accounts of Robles’s experience appear to have been preserved. The only known interview that quotes his words was published in El Universal on April 14, 1927.

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Juan the Chamula Ricardo Pozas

Few accounts of the revolution better illustrate its intensely factionalized nature and the shallowness of the allegiances of common foot soldiers than the following “ethno-­ logical re-­creation” of the life of a Chamula Indian by Ricardo Pozas, one of Mexico’s most distinguished anthropologists. Pozas based his account on fieldwork conducted in the 1940s and 1950s among the Chamulas of Chiapas, a group of about sixteen thousand people who spoke the Tzotzil Maya language and who lived in rural settlements in the highlands around the regional center of San Cristóbal de Las Casas. Even today, many Chamulas live principally from subsistence farming, supplemented by contract labor on lowland coffee plantations. They practice a culture that still owes much to pre-­Columbian traditions. The principal character in this account, Juan Pérez Jolote, first leaves home in order to escape the wrath of his abusive father. He is clearly puzzled by the world outside his village and has little understanding of the meaning of revolution or the aims of the various factions he fights for. In short order, however, the revolution revamps his identity and redirects his fortunes. They were looking for people to work on a farm called La Flor. I contracted to go, and when I got to La Flor the patrón told me: “I’m going to give you your meals and you’ll sleep here next to the henhouse, so you can scare away the animals that try to steal the chickens at night.” I slept there, and woke up when I heard a noise. Then I shouted so that the animals would run away. I worked at La Flor for about three months, and got to know three men from Comitán who had women with them to cook their meals. One of them asked me, “Are you going to keep on working here, José?” 1 “Yes,” I said. “Then don’t eat over there in the kitchen. You can eat better here with my woman,” he said. . . . The men from Comitán used to get drunk every payday. When they were drunk they exchanged their women among themselves, but the next day they were jealous. “You, you cabrón!” 2 one of them said. “You’re screwing my wife.” “And you’re screwing mine.”

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Chamula Indian, Chiapas. As Pozas’s narrative attests, the image of the Chamula subsistence farmer belies the contingencies and intense displacements experienced by rural peoples during the revolution. From Historia Gráfica de la Revolución Mexicana 1900–1970, vol. 7, by Gustavo Casasola Zapata (Mexico City: Editorial Trillas, 1992), 2,264.

Then the third one came over. “You’re screwing my woman, too.” And the fight began: “Why don’t we ask José Pérez if it isn’t true?” “He doesn’t drink, and anyway I saw you, cabrón . . .” They asked me if it was true. “I don’t know. . . . I don’t sleep here, so I don’t see what happens at night . . .” “You mean you don’t want to tell us.” That was right. I didn’t want to tell them because I knew what would happen, but I’d seen the whole thing and the woman who cooked for me told me about it in the morning. They fought with their machetes. The women and I were frightened and

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we just watched them. One of them was killed, and the other two and the three women ran away. I didn’t know what to do. “If I run away,” I thought, “they’ll say I killed him.” So I stayed there, watching the blood run out of his wounds. As soon as they knew that a man from Comitán had been killed, they went to tell the authorities in Mapa. The police came out to the farm to find out what happened, and they saw me there near the corpse. “Who killed him?” “I don’t know.” “What do you mean, you don’t know! You were right here with the rest of them. If you don’t tell us we’ll have to take you in.” “I don’t know,” I said. And without another word they fastened my hands with a rope and tied me to a post. . . . They took the dead man away, and they took me to Mapa as a prisoner and I slept there in the jail. Early the next morning we went on to Tapachula and they put me in the jail there. I was a prisoner for eleven months and two weeks. I wove palm leaves and they paid me one centavo for each armful. A man from San Cristóbal named Procopio de la Rosa advised me not to sell the woven palm but to make sombreros out of it. “If you weave five armfuls, that’s only five centavos. But if you’ll make the brims of the sombreros I’ll pay you three centavos apiece.” I could finish two brims a day, and I earned six centavos. . . . Later on, Don Procopio told me, “I’m going to give you your palm from now on, so you can work on account.” He was the one who sold the palm to everybody. He delivered the finished sombreros by the dozen to be sold outside. Then he taught me how to make sombreros that sold for a peso and a half. . . . I didn’t suffer in jail because I learned how to make all these things. . . . When they first put me in jail I could understand Spanish well enough but I couldn’t pronounce the words. I learned how to make things by watching because there wasn’t anybody who knew how to speak my language, and little by little I began to speak Spanish. While I was in jail we learned that the Government [Huerta’s] was in danger of losing because they killed the President [Madero]. It was looking for people for the army so it could defend itself. Two of the prisoners wrote letters to the Government, and it told them that if they wanted to be soldiers they should put in a request. The rest of us didn’t say anything, because we didn’t know if we wanted to be soldiers or not, but the Government didn’t accept just the two who wrote letters, it accepted everybody in the jail. Even the invalids got out along with the others. The soldiers came for us at four in the morning, and the man in charge said, “All prisoners get their belongings together. You’re all going to be free.” But they took us to the station and put us into a boxcar, the kind that’s used 340  Ricardo Pozas

for cattle and bananas. The soldiers guarded us on all sides, and two of them stood at the door of the car, poking us with their pistols and saying, “Come on, get in.” I brought five new sombreros along with me to sell on the way. We arrived at San Jerónimo and they took us off the train and put us in a barracks. They took my sombreros away from me to start a fire so they could make coffee. They gave a close haircut to everyone who had long hair. They took our extra clothing away if we had any, and gave us coats with long sleeves. The next day we went on toward Mexico City. I could hear them naming the different places we passed: Orizaba, Puebla . . . We arrived at San Antonio, where there was firewood. They took us out of the cars to rest, and built a fire so we could warm ourselves. It was the season when the corn is ripe. After we ate, they put us back in the cars and we went on until we reached the Mexico City station. They took us to the army post called La Canoa, and the next day they signed us up. . . . They took us to a different barracks and made us take off all our clothes. Then they examined us. Those who had ringworm . . . weren’t any use as soldiers because the Government didn’t want them. It also didn’t want anyone with boils or tumors. The only ones they kept were the ones with clean skins, and since I’ve always had a clean skin, without any sores, they didn’t let me go free. They began to pay wages to those of us who were left: twenty-­five centavos a day and our meals. After a few days they gave each of us a pair of huaraches, and then a pair of shoes. Later they gave us kepis, and Mausers with wooden bullets, and now that we were in uniform they paid us fifty centavos a day and our meals. The training started at four in the morning. The corporals, sergeants, lieutenants, and captains made us form ranks and learn how to march. At six o’clock we all drank coffee. There were a hundred and twenty-­five of us, and we were from many different villages because there’s a jail in every village. They called us the 89th Battalion. A few days later they taught us how to handle our guns and how to shoot. We formed ranks, some of us in front and the rest behind, and when they shouted the command we had to throw ourselves flat on the ground. At other times they ordered some of us to kneel and the others to remain standing. They lined up some of our own men in front of us, and said, “This is the enemy. We’re going to practice what you’ll have to do in battle. Ready! Aim! Fire!” We pulled the triggers, there was a loud noise, and the little pieces of soft wood popped out of the Mausers. We were just training, so the bullets weren’t real. . . . Finally they gave us real bullets, fifty to each man, and we began to earn a peso a day. After they gave us the real bullets we didn’t fire anymore, we just practiced the way they taught us before. Juan the Chamula  341

A little later we went out to fight Carranza. Before we left, a priest came to the post and they told us to form ranks. He stood up on a chair, we all knelt down, and he said, “Well, men, I’m here to tell you that we’re going into battle tomorrow or the day after, because the enemy is getting close. When you’re out there fighting, I don’t want you to mention the devil or the demons. I just want you to repeat day and night the words I’m going to tell you: Long live the Virgin of Guadalupe! Because she’s the patron saint of every Mexican, the Queen of Mexico, and she’ll protect us against our enemies when we go into battle.” We left the next day. They loaded us into boxcars with our weapons, and told us we were going to Aguascalientes. We could hear artillery along the way, and when we looked out through the cracks we could see people running across the mountains. My comrades said, “It’s going to be wonderful!” Some of them had guitars with them, and they played and sang because they were so happy. We stopped in Aguascalientes, and then went on to Zacatecas. Then we just stayed there, because the train couldn’t go any farther. They took us out of the cars and put us in a big house that was like a fort. We stayed there for several days. They got us up at four o’clock every morning and gave us a drink of aguardiente with gunpowder in it, to make us brave, and then gave us our breakfast. Those that had women with them were contented, they laughed and sang and played their guitars. “We’re doing all right,” they said, “and tomorrow we’re going to the fiesta.” The time came to go out to fight. There was a mountain near Zacatecas with a little hill in front of it, and the artillery faced the mountain. The artillerymen dug a cave near their guns and cooked their meals in it. At nine in the morning we crossed a wide field to climb up the mountain, and while we were crossing it we heard the General shout, “Spread out!” The bugle blew and we scattered across the field. The enemy was up there on the top of the mountain, because the bullets came down at us from above. We started to shoot too, but since we couldn’t see where they were, and they could get a good aim at us, a lot of our men were killed. The artillery was firing at the mountain, and some other soldiers ran forward and climbed up the mountain from the side, and the enemy retreated a little. That night we had to bring in the wounded, without even having drunk any water all day. One of them said to me, “Take me back to the artillery positions. I can’t walk. And bring my Mauser.” I got him to the artillery. My throat began to hurt, and when I tried to drink some water it wouldn’t go down. I couldn’t eat anything, either, and I was deaf from the noise of the cannons. They sent me to the post at Zacatecas, and then to Aguascalientes. I was in the hospital there for two days, and on the third day I was sent to the hospital in Mexico City, where I almost died from my earaches. First blood came out, 342  Ricardo Pozas

then pus. I was in the hospital for several months, because they wouldn’t let me leave until I was well again. The people who were taking care of us began to say, “Who knows what’ll happen to us, because they’re going to come here to eat people, and we don’t know what kind of people they like to eat.” The sick and wounded began to cry because they couldn’t leave the hospital and run away, and those others were going to eat them. We heard it was the Carrancistas that were eating people. A little later Carranza entered Mexico City. We could hear his troops go by in the street, shooting off their guns and shouting: “Long live Venustiano Carranza! Down with Victoriano Huerta! Death to Francisco Villa! Death to Emiliano Zapata!” They only cheered for Carranza. And we just looked at each other, there in the hospital, without being able to leave. The next day the Carrancistas came to the hospital to visit the sick and wounded. They arrived with their officers, and after greeting us they asked, “How are you? What happened to you? Are you getting better? We’re all friends now, that’s why we’ve come to see you.” The men that had been crying spoke first: “They told us the Carrancistas eat people.” “What? . . . No, we’re not cannibals.” “Then it isn’t true that you’re going to eat us?” “Of course not!” So the sick and wounded were happy. “Here’s two pesos,” the Carrancistas said, “and stop being afraid.” They gave two pesos to each one of us. I stayed in the hospital until I was cured. As soon as they let me go I went to Puebla and worked as a mason’s helper, carrying lime and bricks. I also worked for some butchers, bringing the goats and sheep in from the haciendas to be slaughtered. They gave me my meals and a place to sleep, but they didn’t pay me anything. After two or three weeks I left Puebla and walked to Tehuacán de las Granadas. A butcher let me live in his house there. I’d already worked for butchers in Puebla, so I knew they were good people. I worked for him for five months. The butcher’s father used to go to the butcher shop at two in the morning to cut up the meat, and he always took me with him because he was deaf. When we went past the army post he couldn’t hear the guard shout, “Who goes there!” and he was afraid they’d shoot him if he didn’t answer. I had to answer, “Carranza!” and they’d let us go past without stopping us. . . . All they gave me was my clothing and my meals. I wanted to earn some money, so I went to the army post to talk with the captain. I said: “Captain, sir, I’d like to be a soldier.” “Good, good! What’s your name?” “José Pérez.” Juan the Chamula  343

They gave me a shirt, a pair of trousers, and a kepi, and paid me a peso and half. When the old [deaf] butcher found out I was a soldier, he came looking for me the next day. “Don’t take him away from me,” he begged the captain, “because I need him to help me. I’ve been good to him, too. . . . I don’t even criticize him. Ask him yourself.” “Is that true?” the captain asked me. “Yes,” I said. “I only left because I wanted to earn some money, but he’s good to me and gives me food and clothing.” “Well, if he feeds and clothes you and doesn’t hit you or anything, you ought to go back with him. What more do you want? Good food, good clothes .  .  . he’s practically your father. You’ve got a home now. We don’t know when we’ll be called out to fight. Maybe we’ll all be killed. I feel sorry for the old man because he was crying when he came in here. Go back with him, hombre.” The captain gave me five pesos, and I went back with the deaf man. But I only stayed in his house another week, because one day I met a woman who lived with one of my friends while we were fighting for Victoriano Huerta. She saw me in the street and said, “José, it’s you! What are you doing here?” “I’m just living here. Where’s Daví?” “He was killed in the battle. I’m going back home. I’ll take you with me if you want. I’ve got enough money to pay your fare.” I went with her to Oaxaca. She told me she was going to stop there and not go any farther, but she told me I could get home from there without any trouble. We arrived at Oaxaca in the train and she took me to her house to spend the night. I left the next morning, to go home. I started asking the way to San Cristóbal de Las Casas, but nobody could tell me. I must have asked a hundred people at least, but they all told me they didn’t know. Finally I got tired of walking around the city, so I went to the army post to sign up. They asked me my name and wrote it down, and I was a Carrancista again. After I’d been in Oaxaca for about a week they sent all the soldiers in the post to Mexico City, and I had to go with them. First they sent us out to Córdoba, and then to a little village where the Zapatistas had come in to rob the houses. We stayed there for six months, guarding the village, and that’s where I first had a woman. They assigned me to a lieutenant, and when I was off duty I went to the plaza to drink pulque. It was sold by an old woman with white hair, and one day she asked me, “Do you have a woman?” “No, señora, I don’t.” “Then why don’t you find one? This village is full of pretty girls.” “I know . . . but I don’t know what to say to them.” 344  Ricardo Pozas

“But you do want a woman?” “Yes.” “And you’ve never had one?” “No, señora, not yet.” “Let’s go to my house.” “Good, let’s go.” She gathered her things and took me to her house. She gave me something to eat, and after we finished eating she led me to her bed. I went back to the barracks when we were all done. “Now that you know where my house is, you can come here whenever you want.” . . . She used to come to the post when she wanted me to go home with her. She’d ask the maid who worked in the kitchen, “Is José in?” “I don’t know. Go in and look for him.” She’d go in, and as soon as I noticed her I’d raise my hand to stop her, so she wouldn’t speak to me in front of my friends. I was ashamed to have them see how old she was. I’d get up and go over to speak with her, and she’d say, “I’ll be waiting for you tonight.” And at night I’d go there. At the end of six months they sent us to another village. The old woman who sold pulque stayed at home. We went back to Córdoba and stayed there for a month, and then we went to Pachuca and stayed for two months. Next they sent us to Real del Monte, but we were only there for twenty days because the weather was too cold for us. We returned to Pachuca again and went out to another village, where the Villistas attacked us. They entered the village at daybreak. We were all asleep, even the sentry, when the sound of gunfire woke us up. We all ran out and they started shooting at us. We had sixty-­five men. Some of them were killed, some ran away, and twenty-­five of us were taken prisoners by General Villa. They asked us why we’d become Carrancistas, and I said: “The Huertistas made us go with them, and when Carranza started winning we had to change sides.” “Where are you from?” “I’m a Chamula.” The man who was questioning me, a lieutenant, turned to General Almazán and said, “These poor men were forced into service.” An old man with a big moustache said: “Well, what do they want to do now?” I said, “I just want to be on your side.” “What about the rest of you?” they asked. “Just what our friend said, to be on your side.” “All right. But look, if you try any tricks we’ll shoot you.” “No, señor, we’re telling you the truth.” “We’ll see about that. We’re going to send you straight into battle, to find out if you’re really men.” Juan the Chamula  345

They signed us up and gave us weapons and five pesos each, and that made us Villistas. . . . The officers paid us all the money they had with them so we could buy what we needed, and when it ran out they began paying us with stamped slips of paper. These slips were only good in the village itself, and nobody else would accept them because they weren’t worth anything. The leaders kept saying, “The money will get here in a day or two,” but finally there wasn’t anything left to eat in the village, and we couldn’t buy anything outside because they wouldn’t take the stamped slips. General Almazán got us all together, privates and lieutenants and captains, and told us: “The Carrancistas have captured all the villages and haciendas. I’m leaving, because there aren’t any more villages we can stay in. You can leave too, or stay here. Or if you want to join up with the Carranza forces in Tehuacán, you can do that.” We decided to go to Tehuacán, and left the village at night. We traveled across the mountains all night long, and when it was daylight we got some sleep and let the animals graze. The next night we started out again. We came to a hacienda near Tehuacán, and the leaders sent a note to the Carrancistas who were in the village. The note said that we wanted to join them, that we were a hundred and fifty Villistas who wanted to go over to Carranza. General Almazán had accompanied us as far as the hacienda, but when the messenger came back from Tehuacán with the answer, the General said to us: “Go ahead and give yourselves up, but I’m not going with you. If I did, they’d probably wring my neck.” He left us that night, and in the morning we went on toward the village. The Carrancistas came out to meet us, and we ran into them about a league outside of Tehuacán. They all had their Mausers in their hands, aiming them at us, and we carried our own Mausers butt first to show we were surrendering. They marched us ahead of them to the barracks and took our rifles away from us at the gate, although they let us keep the rest of our things. Inside, they asked us where we’d been, and we told them about the different places we stayed at. The next day they got us together and said, “Now that you’ve surrendered, what do you want to do? Do you want to be Carrancistas? If you don’t, we’ll let you go free, so you can go home and farm your lands.” I said, “I want to leave, I want to work in the fields.” “Where do you want to go?” “To Veracruz,” I said. Now that I could go free, I wanted to visit that town, and be a free man, not a soldier. “You can go there, you can take the train. It won’t cost you anything.” They gave me my ticket and twenty-­five pesos, and above all they gave me my freedom. . . . I worked [in Veracruz] for nine months. . . . When I got tired of working 346  Ricardo Pozas

there I went to a different farm called San Cristóbal, where I worked for three months in the cornfields. I didn’t like it there either, so I came back home. . . . I went into the house and greeted my father, but he didn’t recognize me. I’d almost forgotten how to speak Tzotzil, and he couldn’t understand what I was saying. He asked me who I was and where I came from. “You still don’t know me? I’m Juan!” “What? . . . You’re still alive! But if you’re Juan, where have you been? . . . I went to the farm twice to look for you.” “I left the farm and went to Mexico City to be a soldier.” I was kneeling down as I said this. “Did you really become a soldier?” “Yes, papacito.” “Well, I’ll be damned! But how come you didn’t get killed?” “Because God took care of me.” Then he called to my mother: “Come here and see your son Juan! The cabrón has come back to life!” . . . And I stayed here, I lived in my own village again. The first night I woke up when my father started blowing on the embers of the cooking fire. I was afraid he’d come over and wake me up by kicking me. But he didn’t, because I was a man now! Notes 1. By this point in the story, Juan has taken to calling himself “José” in the hope of evading his father. Eds. 2. Cabrón: literally, a he-­goat. A common insult in Mexico. Eds.

Juan the Chamula  347

The Constitution of 1917: Articles 27 and 123

The ascendant Carranza faction, after defeating Pancho Villa in mid-­1915, felt confident enough in its hold on power to undertake the writing of a new constitution for Mexico. The Constitutional Convention, which met in the city of Querétaro in late 1916, was dominated by relatively radical representatives who were determined to push social reform much further than their leader wished. The final document, which remains in force today, was most notable for championing a fresh concept of property. As in colonial times, the state was the ultimate owner of all of Mexico’s land, water, and minerals. Private property—­sacred and inviolable in liberal conceptions—­was made conditional, something that the state could concede to individuals only so long as their activities did not violate the general well-­being of Mexico’s citizens. The state was expressly permitted to intervene in private property in the name of “public utility.” This notion, most clearly expressed in Article 27, paved the way for one of the most sweeping agrarian reforms in the history of Latin America (one that remained on the books until the early 1990s), as well as for the expropriation of foreign-­owned oil properties in 1938. Article 27 also attacked the right of the Catholic Church to own real property, becoming a factor in the religious civil war of the late 1920s. Article 123, meanwhile, was one of the most progressive labor codes in the world at the time of its promulgation. Of course, many provisions of the 1917 Constitution were honored only in the breach, but the document’s impact on the course of twentieth-­century Mexican history is beyond dispute.

Title One, Chapter I: On Individual Rights, Article 27 The ownership of the land and water contained within the limits of the national territory corresponds originally to the Nation, which has reserved and reserves the right to transmit the dominion of them to private citizens, constituting private property. This [property] shall not be expropriated except for the sake of public utility, and the original owners shall be entitled to compensation. The Nation shall at all times have the right to impose limitations on private property as dictated by the public interest, as well as to regulate the use of natural resources susceptible to appropriation, in order to equitably distribute public wealth and ensure its conservation. For this purpose, neces-

348

sary measures shall be taken to divide landed estates [latifundios], develop small properties, create new agricultural population centers with the necessary land and water, promote agriculture, and prevent destruction of natural resources and property, which is detrimental to society. The towns, ranches, and communities that lack land and water, or do not have them in sufficient quantity for the needs of their inhabitants, shall have the right to grants of lands to be taken from adjacent properties, taking care that small properties always be respected. Land grants that have been made up to now are confirmed in accordance with the Decree of January 6, 1915. The acquisition of private property necessary to obtain the aforementioned objectives shall be considered a public utility. The Nation holds direct ownership of all minerals and substances that, in veins, layers, masses, or ore fields, constitute deposits whose nature is different from the components of the land, such as the minerals from which metals and metalloids used in industry are extracted; deposits of precious stones; salt deposits directly formed by marine waters; products derived from the decomposition of rocks, when their exploitation requires subterranean work; solid mineral fuels; petroleum, and all solid, liquid, and gaseous hydrocarbons. The Nation also holds dominion over territorial waters to the extent and terms established by international law; those of lagoons and coastal estuaries; those of naturally formed minor lakes that are directly linked to constant currents; those of the main rivers or tributary streams from their sources to their mouths, whether they run to the sea or cross two or more states; those of intermittent currents whose main branch crosses two or more states; those of rivers, streams, or ravines that serve as an international border or a border between states; those extracted from mines; and the beds and banks of all the lakes and streams previously mentioned, to the extent fixed by law. Any other stream of water not included in the previous enumeration shall be considered an integral part of the private property it traverses; however, the exploitation of waters that flow from one farm to another shall be considered a public utility and will be subject to the dispositions dictated by the states. In cases to which the two preceding paragraphs apply, the dominion of the Nation is inalienable, and the Federal Government may only grant licenses to private citizens, civil societies, or commercial companies constituted in accordance with Mexican laws, provided that regular work is established for the exploitation of the resources in question, in compliance with the requirements prescribed by law. The ability to acquire dominion over the Nation’s land and water shall be governed by the following prescriptions: I. Only Mexicans by birth or naturalization and Mexican companies have the right to acquire ownership of land, water, and their accessions, or to ob-

The Constitution of 1917  349

tain licenses to exploit mines, waters, or mineral fuels in the Mexican Republic. The State may grant this right to foreigners as long as they agree before the Ministry of Foreign Relations to consider themselves as nationals with respect to said assets, and not to invoke the protection of their governments with regard to said assets, under penalty, in case of noncompliance with this agreement, of forfeiting the acquired assets to the Nation. . . . II. Religious associations referred to as churches, regardless of their faith, may in no case acquire, possess, or administer real estate or hold mortgages thereon; any such assets they currently hold, either directly or through an intermediary, shall become the property of the Nation, and any person has the right to denounce any such assets they find. Presumptive proof shall be sufficient to declare the denunciation well founded. Places of public worship are the property of the Nation, represented by the Federal Government, which shall determine which of them may continue to pursue their present purposes. . . . III. Public and private charitable organizations whose purpose is assisting the needy, scientific research, dissemination of education, mutual aid of members, or any other lawful objective, may not acquire, hold, or administer mortgages on real estate, unless the terms do not exceed ten years. Institutions of this nature may in no case be under the patronage, direction, administration, charge, or surveillance of religious corporations or institutions, nor of religious leaders or of their followers, even if they are no longer in active service. . . . VII. During the next constitutional period, the Congress of the Union and the State Legislatures, in their respective jurisdictions, shall expedite laws to carry out the division of the large properties, on the following basis: (a) Each State or Territory shall determine the maximum size of lands that a single individual or legally constituted company may own. (b) Any land in excess of that determined maximum must be distributed by the proprietor within a time frame established by the local laws; and those plots of land shall be put up for sale on conditions approved by governments in accordance with those same laws. (c) If the proprietor refuses to carry out this land division, it will be done by the local Government by means of expropriation. . . . All contracts and concessions made by previous governments from the year 1876, which have brought by consequence the hoarding of the Nation’s land, water, and natural resources by a single person or society, are declared revisable, and the Executive of the Union is authorized to declare them null in such cases where they involve serious harm to the public interest.

350  The Constitution of 1917

Title Six: On Labor and Social Welfare, Article 123 The Congress of the Union and the State Legislatures must pass labor laws based on the needs of each region, without contravening the following principles, which shall apply to workers, day laborers, domestic employees, and artisans, and in a general manner to all labor relations. I. The maximum workday shall be eight hours. II. The maximum duration of night work shall be seven hours. Unhealthy and dangerous occupations are forbidden to all women and to children under sixteen years of age. Some types of industrial night work are also prohibited. Work in commercial establishments must cease after ten at night. III. Youths older than twelve years and younger than sixteen years shall have a maximum workday of six hours. The work of children under the age of twelve shall not be allowed. IV. For every six days of work, a worker is entitled to at least one day of rest. V. Women shall not perform physical work that requires considerable material effort during the last three months of pregnancy. They are entitled to one month of maternity leave in which they will receive their full salary, maintaining their employment and all the rights they would have acquired under their contract. During lactation, they shall have two extra breaks per day of thirty minutes each in which to nurse their children. VI. Every worker is entitled to a minimum wage that shall be whatever is considered sufficient, according to the conditions of each region, to satisfy the normal necessities of the worker’s life, his education, and his honest recreation, assuming he is the head of the family. The workers of every agricultural, commercial, manufacturing, or mining company shall have the right to a share of the profits. . . . VII. Equal wages shall be paid for equal work, regardless of sex or nationality. VIII. The minimum wage shall be exempt from garnishment, compensation, or deduction. . . . XI. When extraordinary circumstances require the workday to be extended, a salary 100 percent higher than the normal rate shall be paid for the extra time. In no case may the extra work time exceed three hours per day, with a maximum of three consecutive days. . . . XVI. Both workers and business owners [empresarios] shall have the right to organize in defense of their respective interests, forming unions, professional associations, etc. . . . XXIX. The establishment of Popular Insurance Funds for disability, life, involuntary cessation of work, accidents, and other similar situations shall be

The Constitution of 1917  351

considered a social utility. The Federal Government and those of each state must promote the organization of institutions of this nature, to provide for the common good. XXX. Likewise, cooperative societies for the construction of cheap and hygienic houses for workers shall be considered a social utility. Workers may acquire these houses as property through the payment of fixed installments.

352  The Constitution of 1917

An Agrarian Encounter Rosalie Evans

In 1920, when President Venustiano Carranza tried to impose his successor in the presidency, he was overthrown by a military rebellion led by three strong personalities from the northern state of Sonora: Alvaro Obregón, who was president from 1920 to 1924; Plutarco Elías Calles, who held the office from 1924 to 1928; and Adolfo de la Huerta, who served as interim president in 1920. The “Sonoran Dynasty” is generally viewed as the end of the violent phase of the revolution, and the start of “reconstruction.” The new national leaders made the first serious efforts to carry out some of the “promises of the revolution,” one of the most notable of which was agrarian reform. Early efforts in this area witnessed the rise of a uniquely compelling figure in Mexico’s history, the agrarian cacique. In many parts of the republic, these local politicos pegged their fortunes to the agrarian issue, often using strong-­arm methods to compel the federal government to seize and distribute hacienda lands. One such cacique—­ Manuel P. Montes, of the San Martín Texmelucan Valley of western Puebla state—­ met his match in Rosalie Evans, the owner of the two-­thousand-­acre hacienda San Pedro Coxtocán. The American-­born widow waged a highly publicized, six-­year fight against Mexico’s agrarian reform before being ambushed and killed in August 1924. In the following excerpt from a letter to her sister, Mrs. Evans recalls her first encounter with Montes. While Rosalie Evans was more obstreperous and uncompromising than most foreign property owners confronting revolutionary threats, her disdain for the “rabble” is typical enough. San Pedro. May 15, 1921. About four I forced myself to dress and go in my little buggy to San Martin to see Don P——­. At the moment of getting in the buggy I was stopped by the arch-­devil of the valley, whom the Indians have elected as their “member of Congress,” Manuel Montes being his name, so you will rejoice with me if he meets his death before I do mine.1 He was dressed in a black frock coat, and a bull fighter hat; is short and square, with the cruelest little black eyes, like a snake ready to strike. So dressed to impress, I suppose. With him another deputy with a stooping frame and a long beard, also to cause respect.

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Agraristas in Puebla waiting to take possession of their land grant. While Rosalie Evans would dismiss the subjects of this photograph as “the usual rabble,” the agaristas’ enormous mass gathering speaks to their collective agency and purposeful commitment to a more equitable distribution of wealth. From Historia Gráfica de la Revolución Mexicana 1900–1970, vol. 6, by Gustavo Casasola Zapata (Mexico City: Editorial Trillas, 1992), 2,022.

Back of them the usual rabble, but only one man caught my eyes; he had a wooden leg. He with the beard began a pompous address and handed me an order from Obregón and [Minister of Agriculture Antonio I. Villarreal] . . . which, to my utter astonishment, was entirely in my favor. I said, with real surprise: “This paper tells you to respect me and my property.” “Yes,” replied he with the long beard, “but I bring an oral message from the Minister Villarreal to deliver over all your crop, at once, to these gentlemen (the rabble rout) and he will indemnify you afterward.” I said: “Do you think that on an oral order I would give you my crop?”—­ and the riot began. Manuel Montes got leave from “Congress” to come down and speak to the people, so you can appreciate my danger and that of my men. It was he who had arranged the simultaneous killing of administrators that I told you of and who at eleven the same morning had made the people attack San Juan 354  Rosalie Evans

Tetla—­perhaps you will remember it, a place we once wanted to buy, now owned by [William O.] Jenkins and Arrismondi, brother of the administrator killed two years ago. Montes said that he would lead his people on San Pedro himself, and make the señora listen to reason. He leads all the strikes and, if you once let him speak, rouses the people to madness. I determined that he should not speak on my place. He tried to harangue them and “all my rage arose,” I am told, for really I did not realize it. I outspoke him, calling him a coward, assassin and my whole wicked vocabulary of insults. He trembled with rage, but I got my hand on my pistol and he ran—­I standing up in the buggy, [hacienda administrator] Iago by the mule (which they tried to unharness). Montes was followed by the bearded hypocrite. They mounted their little ponies as fast as they could, calling to their people to take the crop by force. Iago had his pistol ready and whistled for the soldiers who were sleeping somewhere inside. There was much shouting and confusion, the man with the wooden leg making an awful stumping sound in front of the mule, when the boy captain of my soldiers ran into the midst of them crying out: “Insult me, not the señora. I will not fire yet, you are too few for me.” (There were about twenty.) I saw we had won the day. They were not armed so I forbade firing, and “Satan fled murmuring” that he would be back in the morning. I left the captain on guard. He really is a perfect little devil, about twenty-­ three, but does my bidding. He asked that I should bring him permission from San Martin to fire if necessary, so far he has only police authority. We then drove to San Martin. As usual, no support! We did not ask for more men, we had seven and with the three of us armed we were quite enough. Note 1. Montes would meet a violent death in 1927. Eds.

An Agrarian Encounter  355

Ode to Cuauhtémoc Carlos Pellicer

Poet Carlos Pellicer (1899–1977) was born in the southeastern state of Tabasco, where he learned to admire the tropics and the indigenous societies that had long inhabited them. He moved to Mexico City in 1914 and published his first poems in 1921. He was clearly influenced by “modernist” writers such as the Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío and the Cuban poet José Martí, who wrote exuberantly about the glories of “Our America” (as Martí habitually referred to Latin America). Pellicer was very much in tune with the strain of “indigenismo” that surfaced during the Mexican revolution—­that is, he celebrated Mexico’s native cultures as the true soul of the nation and its greatest glory. His work includes unabashedly romantic elegies to his heroes, principally Simón Bolívar, the leader of South America’s independence movement and a staunch Latin American nationalist, and Cuauhtémoc, the young Aztec emperor who tenaciously resisted European conquest and was eventually tortured and killed by his Spanish captors. The following poem, published in 1923, was the first of several poems Pellicer wrote in honor of Cuauhtémoc. It is a good example, not only of the exuberant indigenismo that progressive intellectuals sought to promote in alliance with the postrevolutionary state, but also of the tendency among the revolutionary generation to portray the United States as a soulless, acquisitive, and aggressive power.

i. Sir, your will was so beautiful that during the tragic months of your empire the rhythm of the great stars quickened. The time of your most terrible sorrow remains within me: when you searched for allies among the men of your race, and your cry was lost in the jungles. That moment of your solitary bitterness remains within me, and before your desolate grandeur 356

Carlos Pellicer was not the only member of the revolutionary generation to celebrate the heroic resistance of Cuauhtémoc. In this mural the last Aztec emperor stands atop a pyramid and hurls a flaming spear at the heart of a ferocious centaur representing the Spanish invader. In the background, Montezuma appeals to the gods, apparently immobilized by the myth of Spanish invincibility. David Alfaro Siqueiros, Cuauhtémoc against the Myth, 1944, mural, Tecpan de Tlatelolco, Mexico City.

I sing melodies of love and illusion, I thunder a tragic symphony. Before your august solitude I unfurl my own, the solitude of a falling leaf. Your religious upbringing and your heroic, magnificent youth make me a leaf that falls upon the mountains and jungles, proclaiming with great shouts Ode to Cuauhtémoc  357

your grandeur, kicking awake all those who have forgotten the prodigious course of your star. The black arc stretched itself before the dawn and the arrow sailed upward to pierce the last star.

ii. We dedicate a mountain or a part of the sky to the first of the Mexicans. We delight at the magnificence of your actions. You were handsome as the night and mysterious as heaven. But your sorrow cannot be measured by the orbit of the great planets, or by the course of the sumptuous stars that shine upon our fears. Your sorrow, in the dark mirror of my eyes begins to reveal to me eternal anguish and eternal sorrow. Cuauhtémoc was nineteen years old when the Empire fell into his hands like a wounded eagle. Tenoxtitlán was the loveliest of all the cities of the New World. The divine Quetzalcóatl, who was called Ku-­Kul-­K an in the land of the deer and pheasant,1 had announced, many moons before, that other men would come through the South. Thus, he dreamed.

iii. And so it is that today, with the sun broken in my hands I hear rolling in my destiny as in a cactus thicket, the curse of the gods piercing my mouth and the holy ax of tragedy lashed to my hands. Can no one free me from this pain, great as a basalt wave? Can no one give me back the sweet hours of love and the joy of singing in the fields? Because my eyes now glow only with hatred 358  Carlos Pellicer

and my free hands think only of vengeance, hatred and vengeance. Who can go back to watching the stars serenely when it seems that fate must trample us with its stone feet? The civilized monarchies of my America fell. Tenoxtitlán and Cuzco were its sculpted heads. The fine races fell before the brutal blows of the conquerors who overcame the archers with their loud cavalry and wide-­mouthed cannon. The divine prophet Quetzalcóatl, did he foretell the arrival of these intrepid destroyers? Since then, a mournful star flees over the plains and sinks behind the hills. For four hundred years we have been servants and slaves! Who can look sweetly to the heavens when the people of my America were forced to flee before the curses of the Europeans, weak, ignorant, and sick? They branded men like beasts, and throughout the countryside, and in the entrails of the mines, they lived the cruelty, the misery, and the tedium I see, feel, and mourn still today. Who can gaze sweetly upon the sweet mysteries of heaven when ignominy and infamy would bury us again beneath their steely din? The men of the North loot the continent and the islands at their whim, and they help themselves to pieces of heaven. Oh, destiny of inexorable and gigantic tragedy! You cover the wall of my anguish and divert the course of the arrow that aimed at some star. I see your figure sketched in the shadow of fire. Shall we succumb to your laws of gold and silver? In the Antilles and Nicaragua the sun wallows in mud and fear. Our vain and absurd America is rotting. Oh! destiny of inexorable and gigantic tragedy! Can no one stop you? Will you return to put our feet to the flame?2 Ode to Cuauhtémoc  359

Will you return with brutal hands from the land of the yankees, mediocre, orderly, and fat? Will you return amid explosions and machines to steal, kill, buy up caciques with your inexhaustible loot? Oh Sir! Oh great King! Tlacatecutli! Oh solemn and tragic leader of men! Oh sweet, ferocious Cuauhtémoc! Your life is an arrow that has pierced the eyes of the Sun and still goes on flying through the sky! But in the crater of my heart burns the faith that will save your people. Notes 1. That is, among the Maya of the Southeast. Eds. 2. Cuauhtémoc was tortured by the Spaniards, eager to learn the whereabouts of Aztec gold, by having his feet doused in oil and then set aflame. Eds.

360  Carlos Pellicer

The Socialist ABC’s Anonymous

During the 1920s, following the revolution’s bloody military phase, several Mexican states carried out homegrown radical experiments, vying with one another for the title “Laboratory of the Revolution.” The southern state of Tabasco, during the regime of Governor Tomás Garrido Canabal (1922–35), was a leading contender for that title. Much in the manner of Ché Guevara and the Cuban revolutionaries decades later, Garrido aimed to create a “new type of man,” an abstemious and atheistic “man of the future.” To accomplish this, he persecuted the Catholic clergy, prohibited alcoholic beverages, structured production and consumption in the state along cooperative lines, organized all citizens into “resistance leagues,” formed a red-­shirted paramilitary force, and adopted “rationalist” education in the state’s schools. What follows are excerpts from a school primer published by the state’s “Redemption Press” in 1929. Man is a sociable being. Anyone who isolates himself is an egoist. Those who want to have everything for themselves, and who try to monopolize land and money in a few hands, impoverish the country and bring general discontent and misery to the majority. The monopolizers of wealth exploit the workers and are humanity’s worst enemies. The worker needs to alternate between tools and books, between the workshop or field and the school, so that, cultivating his intelligence and forming his sensibilities, he will become a conscious being who thinks, feels, and loves. The worker who has cultivated his intelligence improves and dignifies both himself and his family. The worker’s ignorance is very dangerous, for it allows him to be victimized by the exploiters, priests, and alcohol.

361

Little Proletarian I call you this because I know that your father is a proletarian, and you will be one also. You lack much, and you and your family work hard for your food. Although you are still young, you have already begun watering the soil with the sweat of your brow, and your hands are growing coarse from using heavy tools. It is good that this is so: although small you are already manly, because as a child you still enjoy the feeling of being useful. To be useful is to be good for something, to do something, to give something, and it is the noblest aspiration one can have in life. To be useful is to be happy. There are very many proletarian families throughout the world who, despite their hard work, do not have what they need. If you learn that the man who works is the man who produces, and that he has the right to enjoy the product of his labor, you will understand that there is no reason for proletarian families to suffer misery. Think about this: look around you, and you will see the cause of this injustice. Your labor and that of your family produce more than you can use; a small group lives at your expense and steals from you through deceit, and exploits you without your knowing it. It has been this way for a long time! Your ancestors endured it patiently, as did your parents; they have become indifferent and have kept their sorrow to themselves. But you were born in a century of freedom and compensation, you must win for the proletarian family the right to enjoy all that it produces.

The Society of Yesterday Human beings need to associate in order to live. The first union of human beings led to the formation of the family. The grouping of families which lived in the same place, had the same customs and language, and were linked by ties of affection, resulted in the formation of society. In our society, before the Revolution of 1910, an odious division of classes came into being. There was one class that enjoyed every consideration and which had the support of the government. This was the privileged class. The victims of the privileged class were the workers of the cities and of the countryside; the latter were called “mozos” [“servants” or “boys”] and they lived in the saddest conditions you can imagine. They were exploited without pity, and the greatest fortunes of Tabasco were built upon their excessive labor. 362  Anonymous

The greedy capitalists packed many tears and sorrows away in their strong treasure chests. Their wild festivals and brilliant parties prevented them from feeling like human beings, and from understanding the battle that was raging within their suffering souls. Believing that things must be as they were, they grew more and more demanding; they were helped by the clergy in their unhealthy passion to exploit; they shared their riches with the clergy in exchange for absolution, and they were blind and deaf to the sorrow of the oppressed; and, assured that their sins would be forgiven, they grew more and more tyrannical. It was within this society, organized so unjustly and completely lacking in the principles of love and justice that must exist among men, that the Revolution broke out; the struggle was joined against the regime which protected this state of affairs, and after several years and much blood, tears, and suffering, the Revolution triumphed. With its triumph, the workers’ freedom was secured, and they abandoned the farms where they had worked as servants for many long years. The privileged class, being opposed to the change that had come about, abandoned their haciendas. They left the state, and they pooled their money with their fellow exploiters in other states, and they tried to form a counterweight to the Revolution. They have not yet succeeded in their efforts. The Mexican people now understand that they must occupy the place of men and citizens in their country; they compare their lives today with their sufferings of yesterday, and they stand by their conquests and do not listen to those who try to disturb the peace that they enjoy today and that they will enjoy for many years. They are men who feel true fraternity and justice and are opposed to all tyrants and exploiters.

The New Society The current society tries to organize itself without iniquitous exploitation and without shameful servility. The goal is the dignification of the Mexican family, and we do all we can to achieve that goal. The principles of solidarity, a spirit of cooperation, and feelings of equality are inculcated in the school and propagated at civic and cultural meetings. The leaders of this social transformation seek to organize men into a more just and humane society. The ideal of the new societies is to derive individual rights from those of the collectivity. The supreme aspiration is to create governments that respond to man.

The Socialist abc ’s  363

Socialism is the system of organization that is best adapted to reaching these goals, ideals, and aspirations.

The Good Citizen Worker of the field and city: If you want to feel the true happiness to which we all aspire, bear in mind your duties. Once these are carried out, you will understand your rights and how to retain them when someone opposes you. The first duty that nature has imposed upon you, whether you are a son, a husband, or a father, is to provide comfort to those who depend upon you; in order to be sure that your work is justly remunerated, that work must be of high quality, since no one pays for work that is poorly done or done only out of necessity. If you do shoddy work, you will be obliged to take whatever the boss sees fit to pay you, which will never be enough to account for your needs. If your work is done well, you have the right to set the price in accordance with your needs, and you will have enough to live with decency and ease. When you have received the product of your work, take care not to spend it unwisely; adjust your expenses to your income, reserving a part of it for savings. Although that portion may be small, it is not insignificant, since the centavos form pesos, and with pesos one can attend to unexpected changes of fortune, such as unemployment, strikes, illness, or death, in which event savings will ensure the future of the family. Do not ask for a loan, and do not stop eating in order to save money, since savings through debt or at the cost of hunger are not savings. Be good, work, and economize, and happiness will come to you.

The Plagues of Humanity Campesino: Never linger in the doorway of a tavern, and never enter that den of perversion, because there you will only find degradation and misery for yourself and your children. Think of your home before you cross its threshold; think of what you will be leaving in the hands of the man who exploits your laziness and weakness—­ the bread of your selfless wife and your beloved children. Think of how alcohol destroys your system, making you incapable of all human activities which are indispensable for you and your family to live; be aware that if you ruin your body, you enervate and pollute your spirit to the point of allowing it to degenerate into abjection and wretchedness. Think of the shameful spectacle of the disheveled drunkard who falls down in the street and becomes the object of scorn or pity for passersby. 364  Anonymous

Reflect on the brutal scene one sees in the home of the drunkard when, disorderly and demented, he mistreats his tender and long-­suffering wife and his innocent children with words and deeds. Think of the sorrowful mornings your children will have when they ask for breakfast, only to find the cruel anguish of hunger because the tavernkeeper, whenever you go to the saloon, takes your wages so as to fatten his own children, while your children grow rickety and weak. Know that the damage you do with liquor is not limited to yourself alone, but you pass it on to your children and they pass it on to your grandchildren, and thus you are forging a chain of misfortune for which you, and you alone, will be to blame. Campesino, think, reflect, arm yourself with valor and energy, flee from the tavern and from vice, because this depresses and dishonors you and takes away the fruit of your labor. Hate those who poison and despoil you!

The False Religions Campesino: If you need to have faith in something, have faith in yourself and in your labor. Nothing contributes to the success of an undertaking like perseverance and effort. No mythical god, no supernatural cause, is capable of granting you the recompense for a job you have not done. Do not think or hope for aid from gods who live in heaven. The only thing that can make you prosperous is the effort that you make to better your own position. The only way to achieve welfare is through work. Work that is conscious, guided, and always striving toward perfection is what makes us prosper economically and lets us enjoy the satisfaction of having finished a job. Do not have faith in false religions that teach you humility and force you to renounce your rights as a conscious citizen. Do not enter into religions that counsel you to be meek when other men belonging to superior classes exploit your labor and turn you from a man into a beast of production. Reject the religions that offer you glory in heaven in exchange for your slavery here on the earth. Live on your feet, like a man among men! There are no superior castes! Repudiate the religions that preach and maintain the division of human beings into castes. Man must not live to be exploited by other men. Socialism, the modern doctrine of social confraternity, advocates cooperation, not the exploitation of man by man. Recall with horror those who admonished you to be meek when you worked fourteen hours a day and lived like a beast, often worse than some The Socialist abc ’s  365

Antireligious demonstration in Villahermosa, Tabasco. Demonstrators appear to have placed priestly headwear on a cow, while a man holds a sign saying “Down with the Priests.” This effort to depict priests in what protestors considered a crude and demeaning way might be expected during the fraught, anticlerical atmosphere of 1920s Tabasco, which was whipped up by texts like the Socialist abc’s. Photographer unknown, ca. 1928, Fototeca Nacional del inah , Colección Archivo Casasola, 640026.

of the animals which belonged to the privileged people. The ones who counseled you thus were the infamous representatives of a false god, who would permit such foul injustices and cruelties. Think that your only god is labor, because it redeems you; but work that demands just recompense, work that is coordinated and organized by socialism, because it unites and strengthens the workers to demand their rights. Work is an individual duty; it is also a social duty and a high moral duty, because the morality which prevails in modern society teaches that only the person who works should live, whether he works materially or intellectually, with brawn or brain; so long as, in the end, he works. Have faith in work as a duty, and this belief will be your best religion.

366  Anonymous

The Ballad of Valentín of the Sierra Anonymous

As the previous selection suggests, anticlericalism was a major theme in the Mexican revolution. Modernizing elites blamed the Roman Catholic Church for inculcating superstition and ignorance among the masses, and of meddling repeatedly in politics on behalf of reactionary elements. In 1926 President Plutarco Elías Calles began making serious efforts to enforce the anticlerical legislation contained in the 1917 Constitution. The most objectionable provision of that legislation, for Mexico’s Catholic clergy, was one that required all clergymen to register with the government. In response to this initiative, the Church hierarchy called on the clergy to shut down their operations and begin what was, in effect, a religious strike. In the west-­central states of Michoa­ cán, Zacatecas, and Jalisco, peasants took up arms against the government with the battle cry “¡Viva Cristo Rey!” (“Long Live Christ the King!”). This bloody civil war, known as the Cristero Rebellion, raged for nearly three years. What follows is a co­ rrido, a popular folk ballad that appears in scores of local versions, all of which reflect the sentiments of the Cristeros, particularly their loyalty to their village priests and comrades-­in-­arms. Without question the best-known of the substantial repertoire of ballads devoted to the Cristero Rebellion, this corrido narrates the circumstances surrounding the 1928 death of one Valentín Avila in the sierra that joins the states of Jalisco and Zacatecas. Little is known of Avila’s life or military career, though the manner in which he met his death has won this humble cristero virtual immortality. I’m going to sing some verses About a friend from my tierra [locality], About the brave Valentín, Who was shot and hung in the sierra. I hate to remember That cold winter’s afternoon When it was his bad luck To fall into the Government’s hands. On the Fresno riverbank Valentín met up with The enemy agraristas of the valley Who questioned him and took him prisoner. . . . 367

Cristeros, photographer unknown, ca. 1926–29.

The federal general asked Valentín: “How many men do you command?” Valentín replied: “The fifteen soldiers camped at the Rancho Holanda.” The general then asked him: “How many men were in your company?” “The eight hundred men That Mariano Mejía brought through the sierra.” The general said to him: “Valentín, tell me the truth. If you tell me what I want to know I’ll give you two thousand pesos and your freedom.” Then the general said: “I am prepared to grant you a pardon If you will tell me Where I might find the local priest.”

368  Anonymous

Valentín promptly answered him: “That I cannot say; I’d rather you kill me Than give up a friend.” . . . Before they shot him, Before he went up the hill, Valentín cried: “O Mother of Guadalupe! For your religion they will kill me.” . . . Fly, fly away, my little dove Far from your mountain fastness. Tell of these last rites Paid to that brave man, Valentín.

The Ballad of Valentín of the Sierra  369

Mexico Must Become a Nation of Institutions and Laws Plutarco Elías Calles

President Alvaro Obregón fell victim to a Catholic zealot’s bullet in 1928, after being elected to his second presidential term. His death raised the specter of a major political crisis, as ambitious politicians and military men primed themselves to fill the sudden power vacuum. Plutarco Elías Calles, the incumbent president, fully recognized the dangers of the moment, yet he remained remarkably calm. On September 1, 1928, he delivered before Congress the speech excerpted below, urging his fellow revolutionaries to seize the unwonted opportunity to effect a major transformation in the political life of Mexico. While Calles’s apparent faith in the loyalty of the military was largely wishful thinking, and his repeated assertions of respect for the democratic process were hypocritical—­he would himself dominate Mexican politics as a behind-­the-­scenes strongman until 1934—­the speech did indeed mark a crucial moment in the history of Mexican politics. It was a first step toward the creation of the National Revolutionary Party (pnr), which was supposed to be a broad and inclusive political vehicle, containing and channeling disputes toward constructive ends. The pnr morphed into the Mexican Revolutionary Party (pr m) during the late 1930s,and finally became the Institutional Revolutionary Party (pri) in 1946. The pri would control the presidency and most important political offices for the remainder of the twentieth century. The death of the president-­elect is an irreparable loss which has left the country in an extremely difficult situation. There is no shortage of capable men: indeed, we are fortunate to have many capable individuals. But there is no person of indisputable prestige, who has a base of public support and such personal and political strength that his name alone merits general confidence. The general’s death brings a most grave and vital problem to public attention, for the issue is not merely political, but one of our very survival. We must recognize that General Obregón’s death exacerbates existing political and administrative problems. These problems arise in large measure from our political and social struggle: that is, they arise from the definitive triumph of the guiding principles of the Revolution, social principles like 370

Calles’s stirring rhetoric was not enough to prevent a military insurrection from breaking out in 1929. In this photo, Calles (seated) is seen on a train platform in the state of Sonora personally leading the campaign to crush the rebellion. On the left, with dark jacket and hat, is General Lázaro Cárdenas, who would become president in the mid-­1930s. Between Calles and Cárdenas (leaning on doorframe) is General Saturnino Cedillo, political boss of San Luis Potosí, who would lead a rebellion against Cárdenas’s government in 1938. Photographer unknown, Fototeca del Fideicomiso Archivos Plutarco Elías Calles y Fernando Torreblanca.

those expressed in articles 27 and 123 [of the Constitution], which must never be taken away from the people. At the start of the previous administration, we embarked on what may be called the political or governmental phase of the Mexican Revolution, searching with ever-increasing urgency for ways to satisfy political and social concerns and to find means of governing appropriate to this new phase. All of these considerations define the magnitude of the problem. Yet the very circumstance that Mexico now confronts—­namely, that for perhaps the first time in our history there are no “caudillos”—­g ives us the opportunity to direct the country’s politics toward a true institutional life. We shall move, once and for all, from being a “country ruled by one man” to a “nation of institutions and laws.” The unique solemnity of this moment deserves the most disinterested and patriotic reflection. It obliges me not only to delve into the circumstances of this moment, but also to review the characteristics of our political life up until now. It is our duty to fully understand and appreciate the facts which A Nation of Institutions and Laws  371

can ensure the country’s immediate and future peace, promote its prestige and development, and safeguard the revolutionary conquests that hundreds of thousands of Mexicans have sealed with their blood. I consider it absolutely essential that I digress from my brief analysis to make a firm and irrevocable declaration, which I pledge upon my honor before the National Congress, before the country, and before all civilized peoples. But first, I must say that perhaps never before have circumstances placed a chief executive in a more propitious situation for returning the country to one-­man rule. I have received many suggestions, offers, and even some pressures—­a ll of them cloaked in considerations of patriotism and the national welfare—­trying to get me to remain in office. For reasons of morality and personal political creed, and because it is absolutely essential that we change from a “government of caudillos” to a “regime of institutions,” I have decided to declare solemnly and with such clarity that my words cannot lend themselves to suspicions or interpretations, that not only will I not seek the prolongation of my mandate by accepting an extension or designation as provisional president, but I will never again on any occasion aspire to the presidency of my country. At the risk of making this declaration needlessly emphatic, I will add that this is not merely an aspiration or desire on my own part, but a positive and immutable fact: never again will an incumbent president of the Mexican Republic return to occupy the presidency. Of course, I have absolutely no intention of abandoning my duties as a citizen, nor do I intend to retire from the life of struggle and responsibility that is the lot of every soldier and of all men born of the Revolution. . . . Historical judgment, like all a posteriori judgments, is often and necessarily harsh and unjust, for it overlooks the pressing circumstances that determine attitudes and deeds. I do not intend to review the history of Mexico merely to cast all blame on the men who became caudillos owing to the frustrations of our national life. Those frustrations—­the inert condition of the rural masses, who have now been awakened by the Revolution; the sad, nearly atavistic passivity of citizens of the middle and lower classes, who fortunately have also been awakened—­inspired those caudillos to identify themselves . . . with the fatherland itself. They styled themselves “necessary and singular” men. I need remind no one of how the caudillos obstructed—­perhaps not always deliberately, but always in a logical and natural way—­the formation of strong alternative means by which the country might have confronted its internal and external crises. Nor need I remind you how the caudillos obstructed or delayed the peaceful evolution of Mexico into an institutional country, one in which men are what they should be: mere accidents, of no real importance beside the perpetual and august serenity of institutions and laws. . . . I would never suggest such a path if I feared, even remotely, that it could cause us to take a single step backward from the conquests and fundamental 372  Plutarco Elías Calles

principles of the Revolution. . . . [I suggest this path] out of the conviction that effective freedom of suffrage must be extended even to groups representing the reaction, including the clerical reaction. This should not alarm true revolutionaries, for we have faith that the new ideas have affected the conscience of nearly all Mexicans, and that the interests created by the Revolution are now much stronger than those represented by the reaction, even if it were to be victorious. The districts where the political or clerical reaction wins the vote will, for many years at least, be outnumbered by those where the progressive social revolutionaries triumph. Not only will the presence of conservative groups not endanger the new ideas or the legitimate revolutionary institutions; their presence will also prevent revolutionary groups from weakening and destroying themselves through internal squabbling, which is what happens when one finds oneself without an ideological enemy. . . . We revolutionaries are now sufficiently strong—­having achieved a solid basis in law, in the public consciousness, and in the interests of the vast majority of people—­that we need not fear the reaction. We invite that reaction to take up the struggle in the field of ideas, for in the field of armed combat—­ which is the easier of the two forms of struggle—­we have triumphed completely, as those groups representing liberal ideas of social progress have always done. . . . I would not be behaving honorably if I did not point out the many dangers that could result from dissension within the revolutionary family. If such dissension should occur, it would be nothing new in the history of Mexico, which has at times abounded in shady, backroom political dealings that brought to power ambitious, unprincipled men who weakened and delayed the final triumph of progress and liberalism in Mexico, surrendering themselves, whether consciously or not, to our eternal enemies. I have spoken of our political adversaries with special tolerance and respect, even going so far as to declare the urgency of accepting the representatives of every shade of the reaction into the Chambers of Congress if they win in perfectly honorable democratic struggles. Having said this, I should be permitted to insist that, if one day ambition, intrigue, or arrogance should fracture the revolutionary group that for so many years was united in the struggle for a noble cause—­that of the betterment of the great majorities of the country—­then the conservatives will once again seize the opportunity to insinuate themselves. If this happens, it is almost certain that the reaction will not need to secure a direct military or political triumph. History and human nature permit us to foresee that there will be no shortage of disaffected revolutionaries who, upon failing to find sufficient support from the disunited revolutionary factions, would call insistently at the doors of our old enemies. This would not only endanger the conquests of the Revolution, but it would surely provoke a new armed social conflict that would be A Nation of Institutions and Laws  373

more terrible even than those the country has already suffered; and when the revolutionary movement triumphed, as it must triumph, after years of cruel struggle, Mexico would be bled dry and would lack the strength to resume the march forward from the point where it was interrupted by our ambitions and dishonor. Finally, in my triple capacity as revolutionary, division general, and chief of the armed forces, I will address myself to the army. . . . We have an opportunity that is perhaps unique in our history. In the period that follows the interim presidency, all men who aspire to the presidency of the country, be they military men or civilians, will contend on the fields of honorable democracy. As I have so frankly pointed out, there will be many dangers for Mexico—­dangers that imperil the Revolution and the fatherland itself. Anyone who, during those anxious moments, abandons the line of duty and tries to seize power by any means other than those outlined in the Constitution, will be guilty of the most unforgivable criminal and unpatriotic conduct. All members of the national army must be conscious of their decisive role in those moments. They must embrace the true and noble calling of their military career: to give honor and fidelity to the legitimate institutions. Thus inspired by the duties imposed upon them by their mission, they must reject and condemn all whispers and perverse insinuations from ambitious politicians who would seek to sway them. They must choose between doing their duty, and thereby winning the gratitude of the Republic and the respect of the outside world, and betraying the Revolution and the fatherland at one of the most solemn moments in its history. The latter course of conduct could never be condoned by society or history.

374  Plutarco Elías Calles

The Formation of the Single-­Party State Carlos Fuentes

An alternative, and decidedly more cynical, view of the political transformation wrought by President Calles and his fellow revolutionary leaders is found in Carlos Fuentes’s (1928–2012) novel The Death of Artemio Cruz, first published in Spanish in 1962. Fuentes, a key figure of the Latin American Boom in literature during the 1960s and ’70s, remains one of Mexico’s most celebrated literary figures. The novel is told largely in hallucinatory flashbacks, as Artemio Cruz—­an idealistic revolutionary turned corrupt industrial magnate—­lies on his deathbed. Cruz becomes a symbol of the generation of leaders who abandoned idealism in favor of wealth and power, leading Mexico toward moral bankruptcy. In this selection, the dying Artemio flashes back to a smoke-­filled meeting of top leaders of the Sonoran dynasty, where the Machiavellian credo of the new official party is set forth. Cruz uses second-­person pronouns throughout the novel to narrate events from his own life, perhaps in an attempt to distance himself from the regret and shame he feels. Here, channeling the voice of one of his old commanding officers allows Cruz to communicate unfortunate truths about the results of the revolution—­that its benefits were not evenly distributed across the population, and that those who found themselves in positions of power chose to pursue their own self-­interests instead of providing for the greater good—­while absolving himself of any responsibility for the current state of the country. [1924: June 3] . . . and that night you will talk with Major Gavilán in a whorehouse, with all your old comrades, and you will not remember what was said, or whether they said it or you said it, speaking with a cold voice that will not be the voice of men but of power and self interest: we desire the greatest possible good for our country, so long as it accords with our own good: let us be intelligent and we can go far: let us accomplish the necessary, not attempt the impossible: let us decide here tonight what acts of cruelty and force are needed now to make it possible for us to avoid cruelty and force later: let us parcel out wellbeing, that the people may have their smell of it; the Revolution can satisfy them now, but tomorrow they may ask for more and more, and what would we have left to offer if we should give everything already? except, perhaps, our 375

lives, our lives: and why die if we thereby do not live to see the beneficent fruits of our heroic deaths? we are men, not martyrs: if we hold on to power, nothing will not be permitted: lose power and they’ll fuck us: have a sense of destiny, we are young and we glitter with successful armed revolution: why have we fought, to die of hunger? when force is necessary, it is justified: power may not be divided: and tomorrow? tomorrow we will be in our graves, Deputy Cruz, leaving those who follow to arrange the world as best they can . . .

376  Carlos Fuentes

The Rough-­and-­Tumble Career of Pedro Crespo Gilbert M. Joseph and Allen Wells

Despite the hopeful rhetoric of Calles, much of Mexico’s political life has long been dominated less by institutions and laws than by regional caciques of the sort described in the following reading (and in the earlier selection by Rosalie Evans)—­men whose power seems to be based on a complex and mysterious blend of charisma, patronage, violence, and manipulation. Two veteran historians of modern Yucatán, Gil Joseph and Allen Wells of Bowdoin College, analyze the ways in which these individuals gained and used power in their close-­up portrait of Pedro Crespo, the political boss of a strategic portion of the state in the decades following 1910. Temax is at the end of the road. A few blocks north of the weather-­beaten plaza, the paved road from Izamal runs out; farther on, camino blanco winds for about twenty kilometers through scrub, then mangrove swamp to the Gulf of Mexico. Eighty kilometers west of the town is the state capital, Mérida: en route one travels through the heart of what remains of the henequen (sisal) zone, glimpsing remnants of a more affluent past. Scattered, rachitic, poorly tended henequen fields can be seen on both sides of the highway, which is crisscrossed here and there by the rusting and twisted rails of imported Decauville narrow-­gauge tram tracks. Blackened chimneys and the ruins of once-­elegant haciendas similarly bear witness to the grandeur of a monoculture now decades past its final decline. To the east of Temax, henequen’s bluish-­g ray spines soon give way to denser scrub and clearings of grazing cattle; beyond the neighboring village of Buctzotz there is little to see for another seventy kilometers, until Tizimin, cattle country’s new boomtown. Hot, dusty, and unprepossessing to the casual eye, Temax appears to be just another desperately poor and sleepy municipal seat that time has long since passed by. Current appearances, however, mask a turbulent and intriguing past. Indeed, Temax figured prominently in Yucatecan history from the apocalyptic Caste War of the mid-­n ineteenth century through the institutionalization of Mexico’s Revolution in the mid-­t wentieth. Poised as it was between the once-­ 377

dynamic henequen zone and the marginal sparsely populated hinterland, between the settled plantation society and the zone of refuge for the rebellious Maya campesinos who resisted plantation encroachment on their traditional way of life, Temax had been a strategic periphery or frontier. Consequently, its control had posed a significant problem for Yucatán’s modern rulers. And, for much of the first half of the twentieth century, Temax’s political fortunes were closely linked to the career of an extraordinary rural insurgent and political boss, Pedro Crespo. State authorities came to realize that the price of peace in Temax was a certain degree of autonomy for Don Pedro. . . . Crespo knew how to survive. [His] political career came to embody the achievements and contradictions of the larger revolutionary process. We know relatively little about Crespo’s prerevolutionary career before he burst upon the local political scene in March 1911. . . . [He was] born about 1870, of humble village origins, like many campesinos on the fringes of the expanding henequen zone. .  .  . [He] grew up determined to preserve [his] family’s status as small but free cultivators. Quite likely, he chose to enlist in the state national guard, to avoid the mechanism of debt that tied an ever-­ increasing number of villagers as peons to the large and powerful henequen estates. In short order, Crespo demonstrated his prowess as a soldier and was made an officer in the local guard. How did Crespo regard his duties, which included hunting down and returning runaway people to their masters, quelling worker protests against brutal, slavelike labor conditions, and implementing the hated leva (conscription), which dragooned villagers and drifters into the guard? We’ll never know. No doubt Crespo came to know the social world of north-­central Yucatán beyond the boundaries of the rural countryside. Temaxeños remember him as a man with a foot in both worlds: “un mestizo de buen hablar”—­a Maya who spoke Spanish well and could handle himself in town.1 Through his work, young Crespo was introduced to the milieu of urban polities, to the ever-­shifting layered networks of patronage and clientele, which tied the local dzules—­powerful [white] rulers of land and men in their own right—­to even more powerful patrons in the state capital. As an officer in the guard, Crespo was compelled to play this exacting, dangerous game of late Porfirian politics. Although he initially flirted with the intrigues of a disenfranchised faction of the planter elite in 1909, by the eve of the 1910 gubernatorial election, Crespo had allied himself with Enrique Muñoz Arístegui, the “official” candidate of the “Divine Caste,” an entrenched oligarchy led by the state’s most powerful planter, merchant, and politician, Don Olegario Molina. Don Olegario was a formidable patron. He was a favorite of President Porfirio Díaz, and, following a term as governor of Yucatán, he served as minister of development in Díaz’s cabinet (1907–11). Molina’s relations filled the upper echelons of the state’s bureaucratic machine. Indeed, the power of the 378  Gilbert M. Joseph and Allen Wells

“Divine Caste” radiated outward from the Molina parentesco (extended family), which, apart from its national connections, was greatly fortified by its partnership with the principal buyer of raw henequen fiber, the International Harvester Company. Under the terms of a secret arrangement between Molina’s import-­export house and the North American corporation, large sums of foreign capital were periodically placed at the oligarch’s disposal, enabling Molina y Compañía to affect price trends, acquire mortgages, and consolidate its hold on fiber production, communications, the infrastructure, and banking in the region. Despite the fabulous wealth generated by the fin de siècle henequen boom, the first decade of the new century was a veritable summer of discontent for the vast majority of Yucatecan producers, merchants, workers, and campesinos, who found themselves personally indebted or subordinated, in one form or another, to the Molina parentesco. Francisco Madero’s national political campaign against the Díaz regime emboldened two disgruntled camarillas (political factions) of the Yucatecan planter class and their middle-­class allies to organize parties for the purpose of challenging Molinista hegemony in the 1910 elections. Formed in 1909, these rather loose political coalitions, the Centro Electoral Independiente and the Partido Antireeleccionista, were known popularly as “More­nistas” and “Pinistas,” after their respective standard-­bearers, Delio Moreno Cantón and José María Pino Suárez, who were journalists. But they were financed by their planter supporters, and each faction hastily attempted to construct alliances reaching into the urban intelligentsia and small working class, and, perhaps even more tactically, into the large and potentially explosive Maya campesinado. As a rising military leader able to bridge the cultural distance between dzules and campesinos, Crespo was a valuable asset in strategic Temax and was wooed by incumbents and dissidents alike. After testing the waters of Morenismo, however, he chose to stay with the Molinista . . . puppet, Muñoz Arístegui. . . . What, then, turned this cautious policeman into a revolutionary? Quite likely he was unable to ignore ties of blood and a claim for vengeance. Like Pancho Villa, whose sister was raped, and countless others who joined Madero’s national movement in 1910, a sense of deep personal outrage set Crespo at odds with the Porfirian authorities. . . . Crespo had been left by Temax’s corrupt jefe político [district prefect], Colonel Antonio Herrera, who also was Crespo’s superior officer in the local guard detachment, to languish for thirty days in the notoriously unfriendly confines of Mérida’s Juárez Penitentiary. Crespo would later speak vaguely of differences he had had with the Temax authorities, and his lieutenants would cite the tyrannical abuses of Herrera’s local rule. Some old-­timers recall that Crespo had been openly critical of the jefe político’s high-­handed tactics in meetings with Temaxeño campesinos. But for Crespo, much more than mal gobierno or perhaps even personal rivalry The Career of Pedro Crespo  379

was at issue here: Herrera had killed Crespo’s father, Don Cosme Damían, under shadowy circumstances. Apparently, while Pedro was in jail, Don Cosme had balked at Herrera’s arbitrary order that he do fagina (unpaid, forced road work), whereupon the jefe político ordered his goons to gun the old man down in broad daylight. Soon after his release from prison, Crespo sought revenge. He mustered up a small band of his kin and clients—­most of them peasant villagers—­a nd exploded into revolt. Operating in the chaotic climate that was Maderismo in Yucatán, Crespo elected to burn his bridges behind him, joining his local vendetta to the larger regional movement against Díaz and the Molinistas. On March 4, 1911, he led his column in a lightning predawn raid on the county seat of Temax. The rebels easily overwhelmed the nine-­man guard detachment of Temax’s central plaza. (Later, the town police commander would charge that the guardia had been sleeping on the job.) Crespo immediately rousted Colonel Herrera and the treasury agent Aguilar Brito from their beds and hauled them, clad only in their skivvies (paños menores), to the plaza. All the while, as members of his band shouted “Viva Madero!” and “Down with bad government!,” Crespo vented his rage on the stunned Herrera: “You bastard, you killed my father! Before you were on top and screwed me, but now it’s my turn.” The tables were indeed turned. Handpicked as district prefect by the great Molinista planters, Colonel Herrera was the dominant figure in Temax’s political life, and his physical presence made him even more menacing to local campesinos. Hulking in stature, with his shaved head and long gray beard, Herrera often took on the dimensions of a mad monk or an avenging prophet. Only days before, during the Carnival revels of Shrove Tuesday, although too cowed to make a statement about their jefe político, Temaxeños had mocked his subordinate, Aguilar Brito, as “Juan Carnaval,” shooting an effigy of the treasury agent in front of the Municipal Palace. Now, in the same central plaza in the wee hours of the morning, Pedro Crespo was cutting the despised prefect down to size. In a final act of humiliation, Crespo strapped Herrera and Aguilar to chairs and riddled them with bullets in the same spot in front of the town hall where Aguilar had been “executed” during Carnival. The bodies were piled into a meat wagon and then dumped at the gates of the town cemetery. (It was ghastly ironic that the treasury agent would later be interred in the same coffin that “Juan Carnaval” had occupied the preceding Shrove Tuesday.) Before he left town the next morning, Crespo emptied the municipal jail, freeing some campesinos who had been imprisoned for refusing to do fagina ordered by the deceased jefe político. Crespo armed his new recruits and then .  .  . requested food, drink, and “contributions” from local merchants, and took the 300 pesos (one peso equaled fifty U.S. cents) in the municipal treasury. Yet Crespo . . . made sure that Temax’s prominent families were not 380  Gilbert M. Joseph and Allen Wells

physically harmed, and he strictly limited his men’s intake of aguardiente. . . . Crespo saddled up his force—­now swollen to about eighty—­a nd divided the men into two mobile bands, one to head west toward Cansahcab, the other east, under his direction, toward Buctzotz. All wore red bands on their hats. In the weeks and months that followed, Pedro Crespo became Yucatán’s most successful insurgent. His hit-­and-­run tactics, based on an intimate knowledge of the local terrain, were celebrated in the pueblos and hacienda communities of north-­central Yucatán, and his ranks continued to multiply. One week after his raid on Temax, his troops mushroomed to 200; by mid-­ April some estimates placed his strength at 400, in May, close to 1,000. Many free villagers and some hacienda peons joined his campaign willingly, eager to strike a blow against the dzules, particularly the despised jefes políticos and hacienda overseers who symbolized the encroachments and abuses of the oligarchy. In Buctzotz, a group of villagers rose up upon Crespo’s arrival, took the National Guard barracks, and cut out the tongue of the municipal president before executing him. In Dzilám González, dozens of campesinos, including the town’s band, defected en masse to the rebellion. The musicians brought their instruments and enlivened the guerrilla campaign in the weeks ahead with a series of impromptu Saturday night jaranas (folk dances) in remote backcountry hamlets. Although many hacienda peons were recruited at gunpoint by the rebels, Crespo sought to erode planter paternalism and social control with clientelist measures of his own. At the Cauacá, Chacmay, and San Francisco Manzanilla haciendas—­the estates of the largest henequen planters—­he decreed “liberation,” canceling all of the peons’ debts. Moreover, Crespo provided amply for his recruits, derailing trains, raiding cuarteles (barracks) for munitions, and levying forced loans on local planters and merchants. At Cauacá, 150 peons joined Crespo, and suddenly Maya surnames were greatly outnumbering Spanish ones in his ranks. . . . Crespo’s guerrilla campaign forced the Molinista regime to expend great amounts of time, money, and manpower in a futile effort to pin down the rebels. Soon other risings against government installations and officials—­ like Crespo’s, nominally Maderista—­spread through the countryside. During the spring of 1911 the Mérida government found itself unable to do more than hold the county seats, leaving the hinterland to the insurgents. Moreover, village-­based campesinos increasingly resisted government attempts to recruit them to fight against the rebels, or mutinied following recruitment. Finally, Muñoz Arístegui was compelled to resign, and the new military governor issued an amnesty for all disaffected rebels designed to coax rebel leaders like Crespo to lay down their arms, a desperation move that did little to quell rural unrest throughout the state. . . . By late May 1911, Díaz had fallen, and Pedro Crespo had disbanded his forces. But, far from being finished, his career was just beginning. For the The Career of Pedro Crespo  381

next thirty years, Crespo arbitrated the political fortunes of Temax, brokering power between elites, villagers, and peons during the most volatile juncture of the revolutionary period. In the political vacuum that resulted in Yucatán from Díaz’s defeat, Mo­ renistas and Pinistas vied for leadership, and rural violence reached dangerous new levels. But under Crespo’s sway, Temax remained relatively calm. The cacique had only contempt for noncombatant civilian politicians like Pino Suárez—­soon to become Yucatán’s Maderista governor and then vice president of Mexico—­who during the insurrection had called upon Yucatecos to join Madero but to avoid acts of vengeance such as those committed at Temax. Unfortunately, once in power, Madero and Pino seemed intent upon employing the same nefarious “bola negra” tactics of political imposition that they had deplored during the Porfiriato. Crespo’s sympathies lay with the more popular Morenistas, who now intrigued throughout the state with their former Molinista foes against the ruling Pinistas. At no point, however, during the short-­lived Madero regime (1911–13) did the Pinistas feel strong enough to move against Crespo in Temax. Following Díaz’s ouster, Crespo had sent his lieutenants to Mérida to serve Pino notice that, although they had been disbanded, his followers remained armed and could be activated at his command on short notice. Like the Maderista liberals, the neo-­Porfirian Huertista military leader who would supplant them (1913–14) saw the wisdom of accommodating the Crespo cacicazgo. Nor did the pattern change significantly when the Mexican revolution in Yucatán moved dramatically left under the socially active administrations of Constitutionalist General Salvador Alvarado (1915–18) and the Marxist Felipe Carrillo Puerto (1921–24). These progressive caudillos also found it wiser to court rather than wrangle with the powerful Crespo as they sought to mobilize campesinos behind their agrarian, labor, and educational reforms between 1915 and 1924. For his part, Crespo was a political pragmatist; he could live with—­even actively support—­regimes of widely varying ideological coloration, provided they favored, or at least did not intrude upon, his cacicazgo. Particularly interesting is the nature of Crespo’s collaboration during the 1920s and ’30s with the Socialist Party of the Southeast (pss), led by Carrillo Puerto (1915–24) and his successors. Whereas General Alvarado had brought the Constitutionalist revolution to Yucatán in March 1915 with eight thousand troops, the civilian governor, Carrillo Puerto, was not always able to count on the support of a loyal, progressive military and, consequently, had to rely more heavily on the muscle of local power brokers like Crespo. Moreover, in case of hacendado-­backed insurrection against the socialist revolution (a very real possibility), the geopolitics of Crespo’s cacicazgo were critical: Temax was located on the rich eastern fringes of the henequen zone, astride the Mérida– Valladolid Railroad. Its proximity to the [Mayan populated] hinterland made 382  Gilbert M. Joseph and Allen Wells

it essential that Temax be secure since, if it fell into hostile hands, Valladolid and the southeastern part of the state—­the base of rebel operations during the nineteenth-­century Caste War—­m ight once again be cut off from the state capital in Mérida. To ensure Crespo’s loyalty, Carrillo Puerto awarded him the plums of civil government and agrarian office, either to hold himself or to dispose of as he saw fit. Like other powerful caciques, Crespo combined the municipal presidency with leadership of the local resistance league (liga de resistencia), the pss ’s constituent unit in Temax. Upon Crespo’s recommendation, his ally, Juan Campos, was chosen as the district’s federal deputy. Several years later, Crespo succeeded Campos in the Chamber of Deputies. . . . To the day he died, Pedro Crespo lived in much the same manner as his campesino followers: he spoke Maya among friends, wore the collarless white filipina, and lived in the kaxna, the traditional wattle-­and-­daub cottage with thatched roof. What interested him most was political power, not wealth. The revolution had offered him a chance and he had seized it. No doubt he viewed himself and came to be regarded in Temax as a líder nato—­a born local leader, a chief. As such, he did what was necessary to preserve, even extend, his poderío, or his local power base. This entailed constant political vigilance and negotiation; deals might be made with powerful planters and bargains struck with the emerging revolutionary state, but it never called upon Crespo to sell out his clientele, to accumulate great wealth and leave Temax for Mérida. Indeed, precisely because he was a líder nato, he was incapable of transcending his locality and breaking with the political culture that had produced him. In return for Carrillo Puerto’s preferment and patronage, Crespo performed a variety of services for the pss. Not only did he selectively bring violence to bear against local opponents of the party to ensure it a political monopoly within the state, but Crespo also doubled as an informal ward boss, guaranteeing, through a variety of incentives, the enrollment of local campesinos in Temax’s liga de resistencia. Like other loyal party officials, ­Crespo scheduled weekly cultural events and frequent recreational activities. Although few in the region appreciate it today, under Carrillo Puerto baseball became a strategic component of the pss ’s campaign to mobilize its rural-­based revolutionary regime. The sport already was rooted in the regional environment. In addition to its incredible popularity among all classes in Mérida and Progreso, the principal port, campesinos in the larger rural towns had demonstrated a particular fascination with it. Now the party’s goal was to mount a statewide campaign to organize baseball teams “hasta los pueblitos”—­i n even the most remote interior Maya communities. Such a program would enhance the popularity and morale of the pss, which might then be parlayed into other programs for social change. It would strike at traditional rural isolation, which impeded the socialist transition, and would imThe Career of Pedro Crespo  383

mediately contribute to the party’s goal of social integration, even in advance of longer-­term efforts to improve regional communication and transportation. Carrillo Puerto had no way of knowing it at the time, but his campaign also would have the effect of institutionalizing béisbol as the regional pastime, an anomaly in a nation where elsewhere fútbol became the people’s game. Pedro Crespo and Juan Campos became energetic promoters of the game in north-­central Yucatán. In 1922 these beisbolistas petitioned the Liga Central de Resistencia in Mérida for money for gloves, bats, balls, and uniforms, and personally organized ball clubs in Temax, Dzilám González, and surrounding pueblos and hacienda communities. Once this rudimentary infrastructure was in place, Crespo and Campos worked with the presidents of other interior ligas de resistencia to schedule country tournaments and leagues and, later, to arrange for tours by the more experienced Mérida and Progreso clubs. To this end, they frequently petitioned Governor Carrillo Puerto for free passes for ballplayers on the state-­controlled railroads. It is not surprising, then, that local nines still bear their names, or that Temax has become synonymous with high-­quality baseball, periodically producing bona fide stars for the Mexican League. The backcountry ball games that these caciques promoted in the 1920s and ’30s likely echoed with the same patois of Maya and Spanglish that one hears on hacienda and pueblo diamonds today: “Conex, conex jugar béisbol. . . . Ten pitcher, tech quecher, tech centerfil!” (Come on, let’s play ball. . . . I’ll pitch, you catch, and you play center field!). Carrillo Puerto’s socialist experiment ended suddenly and tragically in January 1924, when Yucatán’s federal garrison pronounced in favor of the national de la Huerta rebellion and toppled the pss government, which had remained loyal to President Alvaro Obregón. Carrillo Puerto and many of his closest supporters in Mérida were hunted down and executed by the insurgent federales, who had the financial backing and encouragement of Yucatán’s large planters, whom Carrillo Puerto had threatened with expropriation. When push came to shove during the de la Huerta revolt, the majority of the irregular bands led by Carrillo Puerto’s cacique allies proved unreliable; in fact remarkably few of them mounted even token resistance against the federales. The truth is that few of these local bosses were ideologically motivated or were organizationally prepared to become dedicated socialist revolutionaries committed to a defense of the pss regime. Pedro Crespo was one cacique who did not desert his patrón. In Carrillo Puerto’s vain attempt to elude the Delahuertistas in December 1923 and, ultimately, to gain asylum in Cuba, he stopped in Temax, where he was received by Don Pedro and his intimates. . . . Crespo could not persuade his patron [to wait out the siege in Temax. Carrillo Puerto] continued his flight eastward across the peninsula, a journey that soon ended in his capture and execution. By April 1924 the de la Huerta revolt had been quelled and the pss re384  Gilbert M. Joseph and Allen Wells

turned to power in Mérida, but now with a social program more in tune with the moderate politics of national leaders Alvaro Obregón and Plutarco Calles in Mexico City. The next decade (1924–34) witnessed a decline in the membership and organization of the resistance leagues, a reconsolidation of the power of the peninsular bourgeoisie, the infiltration of the pss by that group, and a sharp falloff in agrarian reform, especially in the henequen zone. As the Yucatecan revolution reached its Thermidor, Crespo, now in the autumn of his years, adjusted with the times. In 1930 he was still president of the local resistance league, but now, more than ever, “Yucatecan socialism” was a matter of form, not substance. Led by their patriarch, Temaxeño socialists wore red shirts, spouted revolutionary slogans, and invoked their martyred Don Felipe Carrillo on appropriate public occasions. Yet few serious agrarian or labor demands emanated from Temax’s liga de resistencia. Apart from the revolution’s ideological drift to the right, the economics of the period left Don Pedro and the socialists little room to maneuver. The henequen boom had crashed on the rocks of world depression and foreign competition. Temaxeños, like other Yucatecan campesinos, were experiencing severe privation and were glad for even the reduced workload that the henequen estates provided. Like most of the pss ’s rural chiefs, Crespo was forced to seek an accommodation with the most powerful planters during the Great Depression in order to keep fields in production and minimize layoffs. Indeed, it was his ability to balance and play off the hopes and fears of both dzules and campesinos amid the roller-­coaster-­l ike political economy of the 1920s and ’30s that preserved his cacicazgo until his death in November 1944. Even the renewed populist groundswell of Cardenismo, which unleashed a fury of riots and political assassinations throughout the state during the late 1930s, could not topple Crespo. Newly formed radical mass organizations like the “Juventudes Socialistas” denounced Crespo and the larger evil of “revolutionary caciquismo,” but Don Pedro’s alliances within the party and provincial society allowed him to hang on. In fact, it was Melchor Zozaya Raz, perhaps the most vocal of the young firebrands in the Juventudes Socialistas during the late 1930s, who would become Don Pedro’s protégé in the early 1940s and ultimately inherit the Temax cacicazgo upon Crespo’s death. Don Melchor Zozaya ruled the district into the 1970s, until diabetes and blindness weakened his political grip. Although no powerful individual boss has emerged since, caciquismo as an informal institution of power and patronage has endured in Temax. Municipal government, ejidal office (at least until the agrarian reform was terminated in the neoliberal early 1990s), and access to work on private-­sector estates are in large part controlled by camarillas, which corporately function as a cacique. A favored few are recycled through the same offices, thereby assuring the Party of the Institutionalized Revolution (pri) and, more recently the newly triumphant National Action The Career of Pedro Crespo  385

Party (pan), political-­economic control. And, while the major political parties periodically excoriate bossism in the abstract, national and state regimes have been reluctant to tamper with the venerable political culture of Temax (or most anywhere else). This is because the Mexican state rests upon a multi­ tiered system of patronage and clientele that always finds new aggressive, upwardly mobile elements to sustain it. Long before the end of the twentieth century, Yucatán’s branch of the pri had duly incorporated Pedro Crespo into the revolutionary pantheon alongside more famous regional icons like Salvador Alvarado and Felipe Carrillo Puerto. Temaxeño popular tradition, however, has reached a more ambiguous verdict regarding Crespo’s actuación revolucionaria. “Era cacique . . . gran cacique” (He was a boss . . . a very great boss), old-­timers pronounce, often with raised eyebrows or a wry smile. This rather terse depiction reflects admiration for Crespo’s courage, resoluteness, and shrewdness, but also registers a sardonic appreciation of his surmounting ambition to control and dispense power. Note 1. In Yucatán the term mestizo differs from the standard usage. It indicates a person or attribute—­that is, style of dress—­which is at root Maya but has been influenced over time by Hispanic culture.

386  Gilbert M. Joseph and Allen Wells

A Convention in Zacapu Salvador Lemus Fernández

During the years immediately following the Mexican revolution, the state of Mi­choa­ cán became exemplary of some important trends. It was among the several states in the west-­central area to be rocked by the Cristero War (1926–29). It was also the home state of General Lázaro Cárdenas, who served as its governor from 1928 to 1932. As governor, Cárdenas reinvigorated various revolutionary initiatives, including land reform, anticlericalism, and resolutely secular public education. He also formed the “Revolutionary Labor Confederation of Michoacán,” an officially supported ­labor/ campesino union and political organization. Cárdenas would later carry his experiments with such mass-­based organizations to the national level during his presidency (1934–40), experiments that are often viewed as watershed events in modern Mexican political history. The narrative below is an excerpt from the unpublished autobiography of agrarian activist Salvador Lemus Fernández, based on his personal archive and his own memories. Lemus was born in Taretan, a small town in Michoacán, on July 23, 1908, the son of a carpenter-­musician. He took an active interest in local agrarian politics from a very young age. While attending an agricultural college between 1927 and 1929, he began to support the social policies of Governor Cárdenas. In 1931 he left his home region to travel north to a revolutionary convention at Zacapu, which lies on a high plain in central-­western Michoacán, an area populated principally by mestizos and Purépecha Indians. The region was dominated by large haciendas, and in the 1920s and 1930s it became the scene of bitter and bloody struggles between landowners and land-­hungry peasants, who hoped to benefit from the government’s land-­reform program. It was also a region where the religious struggle was most intense, as Lemus’s story graphically demonstrates. The Secretary General of the State Committee of the Confederation invited me to attend a convention to be held in the town of Zacapu on the eleventh and twelfth of December, 1931. . . . A couple of my friends found a truck that would take us, even though there was no road that led there. I set off with compañero Ventura Mier, who would later be my compadre [co­parent], as well as with a compañero named Piñón and the truck driver. About halfway to Zacapu, the truck broke down at a village called El Tigre. We needed to re387

pair it with a new part before we could continue on to Zacapu. It was around 4:00 in the afternoon when we sent compañero Piñón to fetch the part from Morelia. Mier, the driver, and I intended to spend the night by the truck and wait for him to return. Let me tell a little story here that shows the sorts of difficulties we could run into in those days. We were on the outskirts of the village of El Tigre with nothing to eat when it occurred to us to go and see if any of the people who lived there would sell us some beans or tortillas or whatever. We went to the first little house, and the woman there said that she couldn’t offer us anything because she had nothing at all in her home. Then compañero Mier brazenly said, “Hey, ma’am. Don’t you have anything for the father here?” (The “father” was me, since I was dressed up as a dandy with a suit and all, making me look like a clergyman. Everyone else was wearing campesinos’ clothing.) The woman opened her eyes wide and said, “Really? This gentleman is a priest?” “Absolutely,” said Ventura. “Just don’t tell anybody. Keep quiet. Surely you know that priests are persecuted, and who knows what might happen if you sold us a bit of food for him?” “You’re right! But I must have something in here. Maybe just a few eggs.” Then the woman went into the kitchen, where her husband called for her. Then he came over to us to say hello, and in a short while we were eating a pair of scrambled eggs with beans and mouth-­watering tortillas. But that wasn’t the end of it: the restless woman began to ask us questions. First she wanted to know why I was armed, as we all carried pistols tucked into our belts. Compañero Mier explained, “You see, the government harasses priests, and sometimes you have to be armed to defend yourself. So he carries a gun, and we are also here to protect him. But no one can know anything. God will know it if the government ever finds out about him.” “Well, all right,” the woman said. “You wait here.” Night was falling when church bells from the village chapel began to peal. We heard the singing of hymns in the distance, drawing ever nearer. Then the lady said, “Listen, father. Since the fiesta of the Virgin of Guadalupe (December 12) is coming up, why don’t we celebrate it today and Christmas tomorrow? Maybe you could go to the church and say a Rosary for us.” “Can’t you see the situation we’re in?” I asked. “Who knows how many would come?” “Couldn’t you give us something? Maybe just a short sermon?” “No, I can’t. I can’t run the risk of letting the government find out about us and then taking us off to prison.” That is how I avoided saying Mass. In the meantime, the religious procession had arrived at the church and waited there expectantly. We left the house and headed toward the truck. On 388  Salvador Lemus Fernández

The revolution’s agrarian reform, as Salvador Lemus’s rich personal memoir documents, was brought to devout local communities in the 1930s by radical, fiercely anticlerical Cardenista revolutionaries. Such encounters extended the church-­state strife of the late 1920s that this poster by Diego Rivera sought to mitigate with its message of a more progressive social gospel. The poster shows Jesus Christ hovering over a farming couple with their gun laid nearby; in its depiction of Christ giving his blessing to peasants working the land that was distributed to them during the agrarian reforms, the poster asserts the compatibility of Christ’s teachings and the goals of the revolution. From Mexico and Its Heritage by Ernest Gruening (New York: Century Co., 1928), facing p. 265.

the way, we began to talk about compañero Mier’s recklessness. We figured that the townsfolk might attack us if they learned what had happened, since the Cristero War was still in full force. Time passed, the evening got darker, Piñón didn’t arrive, and we were afraid to approach any household to ask for shelter for the night. Some heaps of cornstalks, which the people of the region call “bulls,” were stacked up nearby. The villagers pile up their harvest—­the corncobs and stalks and everything—­to let it dry. So we hollowed out a little cavern in the “bulls” to make a place to spend the night. Naturally, we didn’t have any blankets or anything with us. We didn’t want to stay in the truck because we thought we might get ambushed. The next day, compañero Piñón arrived with the part, and we continued on our journey to Zacapu. When we got there, we found the house in which the Governor, General Lázaro Cárdenas, was having lunch along with many of the leaders and A Convention in Zacapu  389

campesinos who belonged to the Confederación. We came in and greeted him, and he invited us to eat. After we had finished lunch, compañero Mier told Cárdenas and his guests about what we had done in El Tigre. The General burst out in laughter, and, of course, all the other compañeros laughed along with him. Even we chuckled, because compañero Mier’s gambit really had been quite audacious, and we had had no choice but to play along. After a while, we returned to the work of the convention. It had opened the previous day, that is, the eleventh of December. It was now the twelfth, the day that the Catholics pay homage to the Virgin of Guadalupe, as the Spaniards had taught them. The convention took place in the yard of the town’s most important church. A table of honor had been set up covered with bunting and presided over by the Governor, General Lázaro Cárdenas, and all the regional delegates were there. My friends and I also took part in the proceedings and sometimes spoke, but we preferred to let the delegates do the talking. At one point, compañero [Antonio] Mayés Navarro called me aside. He had been standing at the dais along with the General. He got down and told me, “The General wants us to go see what is going on in the church, because there are some strange sounds coming from inside.” “Fine. Let’s go,” I said. We climbed an exterior stairway that led to the loft and looked in through a window. We saw an incredible mess: broken statuary was scattered on the floor; the woven reeds that the statues were made out of had been torn up; and the depositories where the faithful placed their “offerings” had been thrown onto the ground. We went back to tell the General what we had seen. The governor grew very upset and asked us who we thought could be responsible for the disaster. Someone told him that it was probably a compañera known as Catalina, or “La Pelona” [“The Short-­haired Woman”], who was traveling with us. In fact, a rumor began to circulate implying that she had done it. We asked her whether it was true. She acknowledged that she had, saying that she and a group of delegates wanted to “finish with all this once and for all.” The General told us that these events did not bode well for us because the townsfolk would find out and no one could tell what might happen then. He said that we had better leave at once and that we could finish the convention elsewhere. At that moment, the townsfolk began to realize what had happened. They rang the church bells to call together all the Catholics that had been gathering in the churchyard and in a large plaza nearby. As this went on, we carried out the closing ceremonies. The General told us to leave for Tiríndaro, but first we dismantled the equipment we had used during the convention. By this time the church bells had attracted about 500 people to the plaza, and they clearly knew what had happened inside the church. Men, women, and children began to shout insults at us all, but mainly at the Governor. We 390  Salvador Lemus Fernández

started to withdraw from town following behind the General, who led La Pelona by the arm. We had to cross the plaza to get to our hotel, but we noticed that the number of zealots was growing. They were armed with stones, sticks, machetes, and doubtless with pistols. They seemed aggressive. We all came to a standstill in front of the antagonists. Mayés and I were walking just behind the General, and we had to stop short. It seemed like the prelude to a vicious battle. Once the crowd had forced the General to a halt, the people began to jeer at him. They yelled that he was not a governor but a murderer and an enemy of religion. The mob lurched forward threateningly, yet the General stood his ground and asked, “What do you want?” He was answered by shouts: “We want La Pelona!” Then La Pelona shook off the General’s grip, took a step forward as if to give herself up, and cried, “Here I am!” The General took hold of the back of her dress and jerked her backward between Mayés and me. People in the crowd began to draw pistols and knives. At that point, the armed compañeros from the village home guards tried to halt the multitude’s advance by raising their rifles to protect the General and the rest of the group. The guardsmen’s attitude annoyed the General, who reproachfully ordered them to keep away, not to get involved, and to be calm. Then Mayés and I marched off with Catalina. We moved quickly between the two groups toward the hotel. As soon as the crowd noticed that we were taking Catalina away, the people quit bothering the General and began to follow us instead. We started out at a trot and soon broke into a run, but the throng did the same thing. It was practically on our heels when we made it to the end of the street. About 100 guardsmen were there, though they did not intend to get involved since the General had ordered them not to. But the mob threatened to work itself into a frenzy if it caught us, so we ordered the compañeros to stop its advance. The guardsmen sprang into action and took up positions blocking the street. They cocked their rifles as they took combat positions, some on one knee and others standing. The compañeros’ decisive action caught the crowd off guard, and we took advantage of the moment to get to the Hotel García, disguise La Pelona as a man, and rush out of Zacapu toward Tiríndaro. But who was “La Pelona”? She was Catalina Duarte, a native of Taretan, the daughter of Jesús Duarte and Josefa Zaragoza (the latter of whom was the half-­sister of Mrs. María Béjar de Ruiz, who was later my mother-­in-­law; she was also the cousin of my compañero Emigdio Ruiz Béjar and of my wife, María Concepción Ruiz Béjar). The family owned a butcher shop. Catalina disappeared from town one day for some reason, and I later discovered that she was an active member of the Confederation. She attended nearly all the conventions. She was so brassy that she would ride yearling bulls in village rodeos (jaripeos) to the wild applause of the spectators. She completely gave herself over to the Confederation. Her anticlerical attitudes were enA Convention in Zacapu  391

tirely contrary to those of the rest of her family. Her relatives were not only practicing Catholics, they vigorously opposed the government. For example, everyone knew that one of her brothers killed a compañero named Onésimo Reyes, who was a member of the agrarian community of the Ex-­Hacienda of Taretan. She once received a gunshot wound when she got involved in a problem involving a priest. That was Catalina Duarte, a.k.a. La Pelona. At any rate, we all arrived in Tiríndaro as the General had ordered. We arrived in the village and everyone was preparing to receive the General, or rather had already prepared to do so. The brass bands began to play and the compañeras cooked corundas, tamales, and atoles for dinner. In other words, as soon as the General arrived there began a huge fiesta—­complete with dancing, music, and everything else—­that didn’t end until the early morning hours.

392  Salvador Lemus Fernández

The Agrarian Reform in La Laguna Fernando Benítez

The agrarian reform carried out by President Lázaro Cárdenas during the late 1930s was the most sweeping ever undertaken in Latin America, and it certainly marked a watershed in the long history of the Mexican revolution. Unlike similar efforts during the 1920s, this reform affected even lucrative export crops such as cotton and hene­ quen. Indeed, the two showcases of the reform were the cotton-­g rowing region of La Laguna, which is located at the conjunction of the states of Durango and Coahuila, and the henequen zone of Yucatán. These land distributions were carried out with dizzying speed as collective farms (ejidos), and have often been criticized as haphazard, politically motivated acts which did little to improve the conditions of the campesinos. In the following excerpt, Mexican writer Fernando Benítez, who has written several books on the dilemmas of the postrevolutionary countryside, provides some sense of the complexity of the issue, for we find that the Cardenista reform’s supposed beneficiaries, as well as its alleged victims, are ambivalent about the results. Benitez gives an account of a European journalist’s visit to the newly organized collective ejidos in La Laguna. The journalist, Egon Erwin Kisch, is optimistic about “the big hospital, the new machines, the new homes and schools.” He finds, however, that the former campesinos are trapped in a debt economy that funnels their earnings to the banks and old landowners. While these cotton workers are hardly nostalgic about their days of peonage before the Cardenista reform, they maintain that life after the reform is “plenty bad.” Paradoxically, La Laguna has no lake. This region is really a kind of American Egypt, a desert region crossed by the Nazas and Aguanaval Rivers. In between these is a gigantic crescent of alluvial soils whose richness contrasts sharply with the aridity of the surrounding landscape. The vast fields of golden wheat and the symmetrical cotton plantations—­ the work of men—­seem out of place next to the disorderly agaves, the spiny mesquites, . . . and the fleshy plants of the dry Mexican North. . . . In 1930 the powerful Agricultural Commission of the Laguna Region, of which all of the large landowners were members, tried to exempt the region from any sort of agrarian reform, citing their economic contribution to the nation: with only 1.3 percent of the national population, they claimed, the 393

Lázaro Cárdenas presiding over a land-­expropriation ceremony in Michoacán. The man at the microphone is Michoacán governor Gildardo Magaña, who was an important figure in the movement headed by Emiliano Zapata. Photograph by Betty Kirk, ca. 1936–39. From Covering the Mexican Front: The Battle of Europe versus America, by Betty Kirk (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1942), 109. Used by permission of the University of Oklahoma Press.

region produced more than half of the nation’s cotton and 7 percent of its wheat. But the fabled efficiency of the hacendados was contradicted by reality. An agricultural center of such importance attracted many people. The landowners, in the face of that avalanche of people, gave out lands—­not their good lands, of course, but marginal ones—­where people settled, living very precariously. Later [the hacendados] tried unsuccessfully to expel 15,000 farmworker families, leaving only 20,000 resident peons who were paid starvation wages. Thirty-­five thousand pariahs, who supported themselves by working three or four months of the year or by working odd jobs, lived amid the opulent great estates. This led to a period of conflict and organizing beginning in 1935, when the day laborers organized unions and demanded a minimum

394  Fernando Benítez

wage of one and a half pesos, eight-­hour workdays, and a contract that would cover the entire agricultural workforce. The hacendados fought back by organizing their peons into “white” (or company) unions; they [also] called in ten thousand campesinos from other areas, offering them good wages. In September, a strike on the Hacienda Manila launched a period of intense conflict between white and red unions, complete with mass firings. These events instilled in the workers some class ­consciousness. While the hacendados bribed the local authorities for protection, the workers received the support of the Communist Party, the rural teachers, and the union leaders from Torreón and Gómez Palacio. On November 6, 1936, Cárdenas arrived with a group of engineers and began to distribute lands. The landowners’ arrogance disappeared as if by [magic]. The president made them see that if they used any violence, the government would arm the campesinos, and the landowners folded their cards and resigned themselves to the inevitable. . . . Cárdenas distributed the lands of La Laguna in one month, and all of the important and revolutionary measures there were taken during his administration. For the first time, the campesinos were awarded fertile lands; and it was demonstrated beyond any doubt that a well-­organized collective [ejido] could be as efficient as a hacienda, [favoring] hundreds of campesinos instead of a single landowning family. The destiny of La Laguna was now, essentially, that of all the ejidos created during the time of General Cárdenas, and if problems arose later, that was due to the inept bureaucracies and corruption that prevailed during the three decades following the reform.

Eight years after the land distribution, a car carrying Egon Erwin Kisch motored along the new highway between the green fields sprinkled with yellow and purple flowers. The famous Czech journalist, who had just escaped from the Nazis, recalled the European headlines of 1936: “Theft of Land Ordered by the Government!,” “Has Bolshevism Triumphed in Mexico?” And naturally, he also recalled what the economists, politicians, and bureaucrats of Mexico City had said before he began his journey: “The distribution, as you will see, has failed dismally. The old farmworkers have only managed to lose their steady wages and benefits, becoming financial slaves of the banks. The new owners of the land are begging their old masters to once again take over the estates and hire them back as peons; but the landowners resist doing so, in the hope that the government will return their land.” When Kisch spoke with the ejidatarios, they seemed to confirm the alarmist predictions. “So, how is life around here?” asked Kisch. “How do you think? It’s plenty bad.”

The Agrarian Reform in La Laguna  395

“Bad? Why? The fields are beautiful and the cotton is selling at a good price.” “Sure, but we don’t get the benefits; we just get a peso and a half per day.” “But don’t they distribute the profits [from] the harvest?” “Maybe so, but in practice there’s never anything to distribute. We still have to settle all of the debts we’ve had pending since the first year, when we barely harvested anything. And we also have to pay the Ejidal Bank so it can pay the big landowners.” Kisch was reluctant to believe that the agrarian reform had turned the campesinos into slaves of the banks, since they had nothing in common with the Indians he had seen in other parts of Mexico, with their sunken cheeks and rags for clothing. He insisted: “Yesterday I visited the hospital that you have in Torreón.” “Yes,” interrupted one boy, “the hospital is very nice. But even when somebody is sick, it’s not so easy to get in there.” “What? They don’t admit all of the sick people from the ejidos?” “If we all went to the hospital, who would do the work?” “And the schools? The new schools?” “The children have to help out in the fields, especially during harvest time. Also, there are not enough teachers.” Kisch’s last optimistic sentiment withered. He exclaimed: “So you were all better off before?” There was a deep silence, like a shout of protest. A woman said: “For the love of God, sir! How can you think such a thing? That’s not what we meant to say.” “Before,” someone clarified, “we lived like beasts. Now at least we are men, and as the harvest grows we earn more.” “What? Didn’t you just tell me you earn a peso and a half, no matter how things turn out?” “Yes, but that’s nothing but an advance, sir; we told you that when they figure up the accounts they give us what we’ve earned.” “But didn’t you say that, in practice, they never give you anything?” “Sure, because we have to meet our debts. But these debts we’re repaying are from the first year when we hardly harvested anything; we told you that, sir.” “Our hospital alone,” said a woman with a cranky tone, “makes us feel like people. Before, we could never call the doctor for want of money to pay him. My mother gave birth to me in an open field, and my husband died in the fields vomiting blood. Now, we have our hospital.” “Then,” Kisch insisted, “do I understand that you live better than before?” Kisch later remarked, “Anyone who believes that our interlocutors were pressured to answer cheerfully and in the affirmative does not know campesinos.” Shrugging their shoulders, the campesinos again said that they lived 396  Fernando Benítez

badly, and Kisch, fearing that the long conversation would return to its point of departure, bade them farewell. In Mexico City he spoke of the big hospital, the new machines, the new homes and schools. The educated people and bureaucrats told him: “How naive you are! You don’t understand Mexico. They never show visitors anything more than what will impress outsiders.” “But we spoke to more than a hundred ejidatarios and they all assured us that they live incomparably better than they did before,” answered Kisch. “Sure,” they responded, “they’re well coached. They don’t tell anyone anything except what suits the unions. Pity the man who tells the truth! And you, sir, were you so naive that you believed them?”

Kisch concluded his report on La Laguna by asking: “Where have we heard this before?” And we, thirty years later, must ask ourselves, Where do we continue to hear it? Because the campesinos are the same as the ones that Egon Erwin Kisch met. Zapata told Villa that the campesinos of Morelos, long after they had received lands, did not believe those lands really belonged to them. And the campesinos of La Laguna, who were only slightly better off than the boll weevil, “not unlike the Sudanese Berber, the Egyptian felah, the Hindu of Haiderabad, or the black man from Arkansas”—­that is, all of the cotton cultivators of the world—­“they complained bitterly of their fate, to toil in the fields like animals, or to support themselves for a year on two month’s wages.” No, Mexico’s problem is not the campesinos. They deeply felt themselves to be men and not beasts of burden. The great and tragic problem of the country is that it was and still is set up by the educated people, the engineers, the bureaucrats with their colonialist education, who hate the people and can only conceive of them as peons or servants. Pegren-­Dutton, an Englishman who monopolized the cotton fiber in To­ rreón for twenty-­five years, told Kisch: “In reality, Torreón began to grow in 1936 when Cárdenas distributed the land among the cotton pickers. In these eight years the population of Torreón has grown by 30 percent, and several thousand houses have been built here.” Kisch asked him if this really had anything to do with the distribution of land. “The big landowners,” answered the Englishman, “were foreigners, Spaniards for the most part, who lived in Mexico City or even Madrid, which is where they would invest their profits. Before, a hacendado would own up to 75,000 hectares; today, the maximum set by law is 150 hectares. To recover the profits of the old days, farmers nowadays have begun intensive cultivation and above all they have renounced absenteeism; they no longer live in the city, so they can personally supervise the exploitation of their lands. And The Agrarian Reform in La Laguna  397

although the old hacendados complain bitterly about the agrarian reform, in private they feel no great nostalgia for the old days, with their complaining peons with their many demands.” Kisch finally summarized the problem of La Laguna and the entire nation, saying: “All this land belonged first to one person, then to a few, now to many. Only when everything belongs to everyone will we see an end to the bitter complaints, and the eternal arguments about the advantages and disadvantages of the agrarian reform.”

398  Fernando Benítez

The Oil Expropriation Josephus Daniels

In 1937 a labor dispute erupted between Mexican oil workers and the foreign-­owned oil companies, most of which were based in the United States. When the oil companies resisted settling the strike in the workers’ favor, flouting the dictates of the Mexican Council of Conciliation and Arbitration, Cárdenas made the stunning announcement on March 18, 1938, that his government was nationalizing the companies’ properties. The oil companies responded with a furious anti-­Mexican propaganda campaign, but the crisis wound down thanks largely to the government’s pledge to pay indemnities (though far below those demanded by the companies); the worsening situation in Europe, which demanded U.S. attention; and the judicious conduct of the U.S. ambassador to Mexico (1933–42), Josephus Daniels. In the following excerpt, Daniels describes the tremendous enthusiasm generated in Mexico by Cárdenas’s decree. With the expropriation of foreign oil properties, a wave of delirious enthusiasm swept over Mexico, heightened by bitter denunciations from other countries as people felt that a day of deliverance had come. On March 22, upon the call of the Confederation of Mexican Workers, some two hundred thousand people passed in compact files before the National Palace acclaiming President Cárdenas and carrying banners such as: “They shall not scoff at Mexican Laws.” Old inhabitants said there had never been such manifestations of the unity of the Mexican people in the history of Mexico as followed the appeals to the people to uphold the Constitution and the sovereignty of Mexico. It was shared by people who lost sight of oil in their belief that Mexicans must present a united and solid front. Closing his address to the multitude, Cárdenas told labor men they deserved the support of their government, and counseled them to discipline their ranks, increase production, and avoid insolent attacks—­“to prove there is a real, individual liberty justly demanded by the Mexican people.” Many thousands of students in the Mexican University organized an enthusiastic parade. Its Rector, speaking to President Cárdenas, said: “The University offers you its solid support in this moment when the fatherland

399

Women donate various items to help pay the indemnity for expropriated oil lands. Daniels describes the outpouring of women’s donations as “pitiably small,” compared to the government’s total payment, but they were uniquely suited—­i n Daniels’s view—­to kindle the “fervor of patriotism” due to their allegiance to the Catholic Church, which advocated for expropriation. Photograph by Casasola, 1938, Fototeca Nacional del inah , Colección Archivo Casasola, 33682.

requires the unity of its sons. It comes to offer the youth of Mexico to be with you as you are with the honor of Mexico.”

Catholics Raise Funds Noticeable was the enthusiasm of Catholics, many of whom had been critical of the Cárdenas government, in raising funds to support his expropriation move. On Sunday, April 30, the Archbishop of Guadalajara advised from the pulpit that it was a “patriotic duty to contribute to this national fund.” It was announced (April 3) that Archbishop Martínez had promised a “letter on the oil controversy during Holy Week.” On May 3, a circular, approved by archbishops and bishops, was published, exhorting Catholics to send contributions. All over the country in churches collections were taken to help pay for the seized oil properties.

400  Josephus Daniels

Women Make Expropriation a “National Religion” Women in Mexico have generally followed an old slogan: “The place of woman is in the home.” That was the attitude of women in the early part of April, 1938. Then, as by a miracle, suddenly they became vocal in their patriotism. Cárdenas had made approval of the expropriation of oil a sort of national religion. The people believed—­a nd had grounds for their opinion—­ that their patrimony had been given for a song to foreigners who refused to pay living wages to the men who worked in the oil fields. When the men gathered by the hundred thousands to show allegiance to Cárdenas after the oil expropriation, the women poured out of their homes by the thousands to voice their ardent support of the leaders who had somehow made the people feel that the oil exploiters were the enemies of their country. What could they do? President Cárdenas had given his word to me on the day after the expropriation that payment would be made. The people were zealous to see that his pledge was kept. What could the women do? Pitifully little toward the millions needed, but all Mexico in a day was full of the spirit of the widow who gave her mite and was commended, having given her all as giving “more than all the rest.” Something the like of which has rarely been seen in any country occurred on the twelfth day of April. By the thousands, women crowded the Zócalo and other parks and in companies marched to the Palace of Fine Arts to give of their all to the call of their country’s honor. It was a scene never to be forgotten. Led by Señora Amalia Solórzano de Cárdenas, the President’s young and handsome wife, old and young, well-­to-­do and poor—­mainly the latter—­as at a religious festival gathered to make, what was to many, an unheard-­of sacrifice. They took off wedding rings, bracelets, earrings, and put them, as it seemed to them, on a national altar. All day long, until the receptacles were full and running over, these Mexican women gave and gave. When night came crowds still waited to deposit their offerings, which comprised everything from gold and silver to animals and corn. What was the value in money of the outpouring of possessions to meet the goal of millions of pesos? Pitiably small—­not more than 100,000 pesos—­l ittle to pay millions—­but the outpouring of the women, stripping themselves of what was dear to them, was the result of a great fervor of patriotism the like of which I had never seen or dreamed. It was of little value for the goal. It was inestimable in cementing the spirit of Mexico, where there was feeling that the Cárdenas move was the symbol of national unity. . . .

Celebration of Anniversary of Expropriation On the anniversary of the expropriation (March 18, 1939) two thousand people attended a banquet in the bull ring in celebration, and on Sunday seventy-­five The Oil Expropriation  401

thousand people gathered in the Zócalo with banners, and heard speeches by President Cárdenas, syndicate workers, and others to celebrate “the historic decree.” The ringing of the Hidalgo bell was said to be the signal for throwing off the foreign yoke. The syndicate workers and Señor [Abelardo] Rodríguez, President of the Mexican Revolutionary Party, created great enthusiasm by their attacks of imperialistic policies. President Cárdenas’ speech was mild in comparison, but he upheld the course he had pursued, said that no backward step would be made, and indicated that the negotiations going on between him and Mr. Donald Richberg, attorney for the oil companies, would be successful, leaving operation in the hands of the government. His speech was enthusiastically received, particularly when he denounced the oil companies for launching a fiery campaign through the foreign press in an endeavor “to crack the domestic economy.” He defended “the reincorporation of the oil subsoil rights to the hands of the nation.” He declared that the oil companies had “made it a practice to obstruct the enforcement of the most fundamental laws by way of diplomatic coercion or mercenary revolt.” He declared, “The potential wealth of Mexico, purely hard Indian labor, exemption from taxes, economic privileges and tolerances on the part of government constitute the essential figures of the great prosperity of the petroleum industry in Mexico.” At the same time flags were flown on the towers of the Cathedral which faces one side of the Zócalo. On one of the towers was a large Mexican flag with the eagle and snake. On the other tower was a great flag of the Mexican Revolutionary Party, and high above all was a banner reading: “The prm extends greetings to President Lázaro Cárdenas, Redeemer of Economic Independence.” I do not recall ever before seeing a political banner on the Cathedral.

402  Josephus Daniels

VI The Perils of Modernity

By the 1930s Mexico’s leaders had come to question the conventional wisdom of classical economics, which held that unfettered trade would benefit all peoples in equal measure and within roughly the same time frame. The international capitalist system, they claimed, favored industrialized countries disproportionately, and adverse terms of trade would keep the exporters of raw materials forever mired in poverty. Accordingly, Mexico adopted the new economic strategy of Import Substitution Industrialization (isi), a state-­ led effort to replace imports with locally manufactured products. To shield fledgling factories from foreign competition, the government established protective tariffs, import quotas, and import licensing. It also gave subsidies and tax breaks to encourage private investment in industry. By some measures, this strategy succeeded spectacularly. The Mexican economy grew at an impressive average annual rate of 6.5 percent between 1940 and 1970, and Mexico was transformed from a predominantly agricultural country to one where industry accounted for more than a third of total production. Such numbers prompted some to speak giddily of a “Mexican Miracle.” It was no miracle. While the economy enjoyed robust growth, Mexico had one of the world’s most unequal patterns of income distribution. And while the government fomented industrial development, it neglected agriculture, especially the production of basic foodstuffs. The ejidal sector—­at one time heralded as the revolution’s crowning achievement—­remained primitive and impoverished. Potential rural unrest was partly contained by the incorporation of the ejidos into the ruling party’s massive bureaucracy—­a bureaucracy that was plagued by extraordinarily high levels of corruption, factionalism, favoritism, and clientelism. Many peasants who found only misery in the countryside headed for the U.S. border; many more made their way to the cities, especially to Mexico City, which grew at a vertiginous pace. There, they often found themselves packed into improvised and dehumanizing slums. Meanwhile, the overprotected industries spawned by isi proved inefficient and uncompetitive. Most were capital-­intensive—­a curious thing in a country whose single greatest resource was its large and rapidly growing labor 403

force. Problems of unemployment and underemployment have been chronic. Meanwhile, government expenditures on education, health care, housing, and social security have been notoriously inadequate. All of the problems we have mentioned thus far were severe even during the golden age of the “Mexican Miracle.” From roughly 1970 till the present, it has seemed as though fate intended to mock Mexico’s modernizing pretensions with a series of cruel jokes. President Luis Echeverría (1970–76) presided over an unprecedented expansion of the public sector without any meaningful increase in government revenues. The foreign debt ballooned. Echeve­ rría’s successor, José López Portillo (1976–82), continued to borrow and spend wildly, albeit with greater confidence, for by the mid-­1970s it had become known that Mexico was sitting atop vast untapped petroleum wealth. It made perfect sense, López Portillo reasoned, to borrow money to modernize infrastructure and pave the way for an oil-­r ich future. Foreign banks agreed, and they fairly inundated Mexico with loans. Unfortunately for Mexico, the early 1980s brought a global glut of oil, and Mexico’s dreams of leapfrogging painlessly into the First World faded. At the end of his term, López Portillo reluctantly devalued the peso, which had been maintained at artificially high levels. The peso went from 26 to the dollar in 1982 to 2,300 to the dollar by 1987. The shock of the devaluation and the hyperinflation that followed was severe. It was made worse by revelations of grotesque corruption in the López Portillo administration, including the tawdry tale of the president’s friend, “El Negro” Durazo, a portion of which is recounted in this section. In view of its hyperindebtedness, Mexico had little bargaining power with international financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund (imf) and the World Bank. Those institutions insisted that the solution to Mexico’s crisis lay in jettisoning the old protectionist paradigm and embracing privatization and free trade. State-­owned industries were sold off; price controls and subsidies were lifted; tariffs were reduced or removed. In the bargain, businesses failed and people were thrown out of work. President Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988–94), a Harvard-­trained economist, took the next logical step in Mexico’s transformation: rather than watch idly as his country was dragged kicking and screaming into the Brave New World of neoliberalism, Salinas was one of neoliberalism’s most zealous pitchmen. He staked the credibility of his regime on the North American Free Trade Agreement (nafta), a plan to eliminate remaining tariff barriers, sell off remaining state enterprises, and enter into a relationship of unprecedented coziness with the Colossus of the North. The methods were different, but the subtext was the same: this, at last, was to be Mexico’s ticket to modernity. No such luck. The very day the new treaty entered into effect, a serious peasant uprising erupted in the impoverished southern state of Chiapas. In December 1994, immediately after Salinas’s successor, Ernesto Zedillo, took office, the overvalued peso was once again devalued, and another severe cri404  The Perils of Modernity

sis was on. Equally traumatic was a series of high-­level political assassinations and revelations of horrific corruption in the Salinas government. The most damning revelations involved the president’s brother, Raúl Salinas de Gortari, who was charged with involvement in influence peddling, murder, embezzlement, and drug trafficking. While most Mexicans and foreign observers alike applauded the remarkable transparency of the 2000 presidential elections—­elections that brought a definitive end to the official party’s monopoly on power—­as we will see in the final section, the new president, conservative ex-­businessman Vicente Fox, also failed to offer Mexico a winning program. In fact, neoliberalism in general, and North American free trade agreements in particular, have so far brought few tangible benefits to most Mexicans. In the words of novelist Carlos Fuentes, Mexico’s experience of neoliberalism “holds out the promise of Adam Smith’s optimistic eighteenth-­century definition of economics—­the science of human happiness—­a nd ends up confirming Thomas Carlyle’s pessimistic definition in the nineteenth: the dismal science.” 1 In any case, the readings that follow seek quite deliberately to illustrate the darker side of Mexico’s frustrated attempts at modernization: the impoverishment of the countryside, the unchecked growth of the megalopolis, the burgeoning slums, the blatant corruption, the ravaging of the environment—­ all of those trends that have routinely been shrugged off as the inevitable costs of modernization. Meanwhile, age-­old problems such as racial discrimination festered, seemingly untouched by new, progressive attitudes. Many of the readings in this section are graphic and disturbing. We do not, however, intend to suggest that the Mexican people have been docile or passive in the face of these horrors, as subsequent sections will make clear. Note 1. Carlos Fuentes, A New Time for Mexico (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 128.

The Perils of Modernity 405

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They Gave Us the Land Juan Rulfo

Juan Rulfo (1918–86) is considered one of Latin America’s literary giants despite his meager productivity, which consists of only fifteen short stories and one slender novel. He was born in the tiny village of Apulco, Jalisco, in the waning days of the Mexican revolution. During the 1920s and 1930s, his home region became the scene of considerable violence related to agrarian and religious issues. His father and several uncles were murdered in 1925, and his mother died two years later, leaving him to be raised in an orphanage run by French Josephine nuns. While he is best known for his novel Pedro Páramo, which has entered the canon of Latin American literature as one of the first works of “magical realism,” his short stories provide powerful glimpses of the harsh realities of postrevolutionary Mexico. “They Gave Us the Land,” which was first published in 1948, presents an almost surreal critique of the postrevolutionary agrarian reform, where government officials congratulate themselves on fulfilling the promises of the revolution by giving the worst farmland to the poorest people. These characters’ unending and apparently pointless trek across a strange, desolate desert serves as a metaphor for the plight of Mexico’s poor in the twentieth century. After walking so many hours without coming across even the shadow of a tree, or a seedling of a tree, or any kind of root, we hear dogs barking. At times, along this road with no edges, it seemed like there’d be nothing afterward, that nothing could be found on the other side, at the end of this plain split with cracks and dry arroyos. But there is something. There’s a town. You can hear the dogs barking and smell the smoke in the air and you relish that smell of people as if it was a hope. But the town is still far off. It’s the wind that brings it close. We’ve been walking since dawn. Now it’s something like four in the afternoon. Somebody looks up at the sky, strains his eyes to where the sun hangs, and says, “It’s about four o’clock.” That was Melitón. Faustino, Esteban, and I are with him. There are four of us. I count them: two in front, and two behind. I look farther back and don’t see anybody. Then I say to myself, “There are four of us.” Not long ago, at about eleven, there were over twenty, but little by little they’ve been scattering away until just this knot of us is left. 407

Faustino says, “It may rain.” We all lift our faces and look at a heavy black cloud passing over our heads. And we think, “Maybe so.” We don’t say what we’re thinking. For some time now we haven’t felt like talking. Because of the heat. Somewhere else we’d talk with pleasure, but here it’s difficult. You talk here and the words get hot in your mouth with the heat from outside, and they dry up on your tongue until they take your breath away. That’s the way things are here. That’s why nobody feels like talking. A big fat drop of water falls, making a hole in the earth and leaving a mark like spit. It’s the only one that falls. We wait for others to fall and we roll our eyes looking for them. But there are no others. It isn’t raining. Now if you look at the sky, you’ll see the rain cloud moving off real fast in the distance. The wind that comes from the town pushes the cloud against the blue shadows of the hills. And the drop of water which fell here by mistake is gobbled up by the thirsty earth. Who the devil made this plain so big? What’s it good for, anyway? We started walking again; we’d stopped to watch it rain. It didn’t rain. Now we start walking again. It occurs to me that we’ve walked more than the ground we’ve covered. That occurs to me. If it had rained, perhaps other things would’ve occurred to me. Anyway, I know that ever since I was a boy I’ve never seen it rain out on the plain—­what you would really call rain. No, the plain is no good for anything. There’re no rabbits or birds. There’s nothing. Except a few scrawny huizache trees and a patch or two of grass with the blades curled up; if it weren’t for them, there wouldn’t be anything. And here we are. The four of us on foot. Before, we used to ride on horseback and carry a rifle slung over our shoulder. Now we don’t even carry the rifle. I’ve always thought that taking away our rifles was a good thing. Around these parts it’s dangerous to go around armed. You can get killed without warning if you’re seen with your thirty-­thirty strapped on. But horses are another matter. If we’d come on horses we would already be tasting the green river water, and walking our full stomachs around the streets of the town to settle our dinner. We’d already have done that if we still had all those horses. But they took away our horses with the rifles. I turn in every direction and look at the plain. So much land all for nothing. Your eyes slide when they don’t find anything to light on. Just a few lizards stick their heads out of their holes, and as soon as they feel the roasting sun quickly hide themselves again in the small shade of a rock. But when we have to work here, what can we do to keep cool from the sun?—­because they gave us this crust of rocky ground for planting. They told us, “From the town up to here belongs to you.” We asked, “The Plain?” 408  Juan Rulfo

Ejidatario, plowing fields in the traditional way. Photograph by Fritz Henle, ca. 1950. Used by permission of the Fritz Henle Estate.

“Yes, the plain. All the Big Plain.” We opened our mouths to say that we didn’t want the plain, that we wanted what was by the river. From the river up to where, through the meadows, the trees called casuarinas are, and the pastures and the good land. Not this tough cow’s hide they call the Plain. But they didn’t let us say these things. The official hadn’t come to converse with us. He put the papers in our hands and told us, “Don’t be afraid to have so much land just for yourselves.” “But the Plain, sir—­” “There are thousands and thousands of plots of land.” “But there’s no water. There’s not even a mouthful of water.” “How about the rainy season? Nobody told you you’d get irrigated land. As soon as it